Dr Austen Ivereigh is a British writer and journalist known for his two biographies of Pope Francis, as well as Let Us Dream (2020), a bestselling book written in collaboration with him. His most recent book, published mid-February 2024, is First Belong to God: On Retreat with Pope Francis (Messenger), an eight-day Ignatian retreat drawn from the Pope’s writings and talks as a spiritual director.
He has been involved in different stages of the synod on synodality (2021-24) as members of drafting and synthesis teams: first for the national report for England and Wales (July 2021), then of the global ‘Document for the Continental Stage’ (October 2022) and was most recently one of the expert participants in the October 2023 assembly of the synod of bishops in Rome.
He is Fellow in Contemporary Church History at the Jesuit-run Campion Hall, University of Oxford. He writes regularly on the vision of the Francis pontificate for Commonweal, America magazine and The Tablet. He is a regular commentator on the BBC.
His two biographies, widely translated, are: The Great Reformer. Francis and the making of a radical pope (2014) and Wounded Shepherd. Pope Francis and his struggle to convert the Catholic Church (2019). In 2020 he helped Pope Francis write his Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
He lives on a small farm in the west of England, close to the Welsh border, inspired by Laudato Sì, and writes on ecology in a ‘Wild Faith’ column in The Tablet. He tweets often as @austeni.
