Inside the Jesuits: How Pope Francis Is Changing the Church and the World
Robert Blair Kaiser provides a poignant and informed account of the notably wide appeal of Pope Francis. Kaiser opens up the mystery.(James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History)Kaiser writes with the enthusiasm and insight of one Jesuit for another Jesuit, Pope Francis. A brilliant journalist with immense experience, he explores Jesuit DNA to predict change in the papacy and Church. It excites with surprising revelations and perceptions. This is a must read for changing times.(Jane Anderson, University of Western Australia; author of Priests in Love)I have known Robert Kaiser since we both covered Vatican Two back in the sixties. He had an inside track, having been ten years a Jesuit, and he has now made an eloquent case for the hope that Pope Francis will transform the sclerotic Catholic Church. I hope that he is right.(Ted Morgan, biographer of Winston Churchill and Somerset Maugham; Pulitzer prizewinner)Kaiser, like Pope Francis, is 'a Jesuit at heart' and he knows what makes Jesuits tick. He is remarkably well-informed and connected, and is thus very well placed to tell us why Francis is turning the modern papacy upside-down. It is because of the pope's Jesuit DNA: the daring to think and act outside the box, to be free to innovate, to remain flexible, to adapt constantly, to set ambitious goals, to think globally, to move quickly, to take risks, to make mistakes—all to find the presence of God in the world.(Simon Bryden-Brook, Catholics for a Changing Church UK)Not for the first time, Robert Kaiser has got it absolutely right. Things really are different under this new Pope, and Kaiser's gift is to explain why, in terms of the 'Jesuit DNA' that are in the very fiber of Pope Francis' being. This is a remarkable insight into a Papacy that is strikingly new and that bids fair to bring to fulfillment the unfinished business of the Second Vatican Council (and here, of course, Kaiser's 'inside track' is enormously illuminating). There is a rollicking ride through the centuries of Jesuit history, at times inspiring, and at times uncomfortable reading for contemporary Jesuits. Kaiser shows how we are today living in an irreversibly new world: God is at work.(Nicholas King, S.J., Oxford University)OpeningInside the Jesuitsis like tearing the wrappings off a gift you thought lost in the snowdrifts of the stern winters that settled on the Church during the long papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Once opened, Robert Blair Kaiser's book brims with the rising light and warmth of spring in his seamlessly interwoven stories of Pope Francis and the Jesuit tradition he fulfills as, with the humility of Saint Francis and the spiritual depth of Saint Ignatius, he sets the table of the Church and invites the world to take the first places at the feast that Vatican II prepared for it. Nobody does this with the insight or art of Robert Blair Kaiser who was prepared for this challenge by his own interwoven years as a Jesuit seminarian and as a journalist who covered Vatican II for TIME magazine. Kaiser finds the Jesuit tradition with its deep discipline and its commitment ever to seek out the little explored margins of human knowledge and experience exemplified in Pope Francis who, because he is not defensive makes the world comfortable enough to lower its own defenses toward the Church. This is an engrossing and, yes, a thrilling book to read by anyone drawn toward this deeply spiritual and yet profoundly human Pope. In short, Kaiser tells us, just what you would expect from a Jesuit Pope.(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, emeritus professor of psychology, Loyola University of Chicago)Among the few living journalists to have reported the Second Vatican Council, Robert Kaiser offers a unique and rich perspective as he connects the Catholic story over five decades. So anchored, his Jesuit credentials add yet another special vantage. The Pope Francis story remains larger than most can yet imagine. This book helps explain why.(Tom Fox, editor, National Catholic Reporter)It is rare that you can get to know a pope from the ‘inside’. Yet that is precisely what Robert Kaiser has done. He has got ‘inside’ Pope Francis by highlighting how the pope’s spirituality and training has made being a Jesuit part of his DNA. Francis is a Jesuit to the core of his being and Kaiser spells out with lucidity and style what this will mean for his papacy. With an insider’s eye for detail, Kaiser introduces us to the spirituality and creativity that characterizes the best men in the Jesuit tradition, men who are always out ‘on the edge’. He sees Francis as being the first pope for centuries who will challenge the church to move outside its comfort zone, as well as being precisely the style of church leader that Vatican Council II wanted.Inside the Jesuitsis both provocative and reassuring: ‘provocative’ when Kaiser outlines just how challenging Francis’ approach to being bishop of Rome will be. And ‘reassuring’ in that Francis is the most Christ-like pope Catholicism has had for centuries.(Paul Collins, author of The Birth of the West)A compelling read if only to hear Robert Kaiser wax rhapsodic about a pope! But there's more, for Kaiser writes from that peculiar 21st century space where a "former" Jesuit can yet profess his enduring affection for the order and the church.(Tom Roberts, editor at large, National Catholic Reporter)Only Robert Blair Kaiser could have pulled this off.Inside the Jesuits, an admiring analysis of what makes the Jesuits such extraordinary achievers in the life of the Post-Reformation Church, is woven seamlessly into a penetrating, astute, and thoroughly engaging reflection on the promise of the first Jesuit Pope. An extraordinary achievement!(Donald Cozzens, John Carroll University, author of Notes from the Underground: The Spiritual Journal of a Secular Priest)At once chatty, insightful, and profound, this part-memoir, part study of Pope Francis as a Jesuit by the doyen of American Catholic religious journalists will delight and inform a wide audience. Written in an engaging style, it is deeply informative of how and why Cardinal Bergoglio was elected, and what we may and may not expect from his papacy. Robert Kaiser places Pope Francis wisely and well amid his Jesuit peers and the Order’s history and charism, puts both Kaiser himself and the pope into conversation with major events and movements in the last fifty years of the Catholic Church’s history, and conveys so well the sense of constructive excitement that Francis’s election has brought to the Church.(Paul Lakeland, Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J., Professor of Catholic Studies, Fairfield University)Robert Kaiser has written a spirited defense of the social gospel, with special attention to Pope Francis and his "Jesuit DNA." As an ex-Jesuit I found this enlightening and indeed persuasive at important points. His hopes for a curing of the papal curia and his stories of Jesuit theologians' trail-blazing in matters of faith were of special interest.(Jim Bowman, author of Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968)