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‘We do not know if Pope Leo XIV will trim back some of Francis’s initiatives, insisting that the church doors be better supervised by the clergy and that the synod processes be more controlled by the bishops. Francis was a disruptor, challenging all teachings and practices that excluded groups of people from access to the Church’s sacramental largesse of justice, mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation. He encouraged disruptive pilgrims who would go to the peripheries and frontiers, tearing down walls and building bridges of understanding and solidarity.
Whichever direction things go, teachers in Catholic schools educating a vast array of students (not just Catholics) will continue to draw fruit from Francis’s refreshing openness to the complex and messy world inhabited by those teachers, their students and their families. On their pilgrim’s path, they will continue to find Francis a fraternal disruptive guide. It’s primarily for them that I write – that they may experience and communicate the joy and mercy of the gospel to anyone who seeks.
Francis was a Jesuit. So I commence with a Jesuit tribute to our Jesuit pope. I then provide something of a primer for teachers and others wanting to keep alive or know for the first time what Pope Francis was about, what he said, what he did, and what he left for us as the pilgrim people of God.’
– from the Introduction
‘A lucid, concise, accessible and thoroughly Ignatian guide to the right kind of disruption’.
– Emeritus Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Brisbane
‘Frank Brennan’s Pope Francis: The Disruptive Pilgrim’s Guide is a concise yet rich reflection on the transformative, often disruptive papacy of Pope Francis. …. As a guide for readers wanting to reflect on what a contemporary papacy could mean for ordinary believers, for the Church, and for the world, it is powerful and timely. ….Frank Brennan offers what he calls a “roadmap for pilgrims” — a guide for Christians seeking to walk with a Church that is an “evangelising church committed to care for our common home by being fraternal and in solidarity with all, especially those on the frontiers and peripheries which are the privileged centres of grace.” Thank you Frank for your insights and roadmap and for opening the door for us, through which you invite us to step.’
-Archbishop Patrick O’Regan, Adelaide
Frank Brennan is a Jesuit priest and superior of the Alberto Hurtado Community of Jesuits in the parishes of St Lucia, Toowong and Indooroopilly in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. He was previously Rector of Newman College at the University of Melbourne and CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia. He was a peritus at the Fifth Plenary Council of the Catholic Church in Australia. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Thomas More Law School at ACU and Adjunct Research Professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture. He is the author of 16 books.
