BY JACK HARTJES

A Maryknoll friend of mine and Orbis Press did the world a service with a condensed version of several of Pope Francis’s published writings. In under 200 pages you can get the gist of ten major works of Francis’s papacy. The book is Fr. James Kroeger’s Walking with Pope Francis: The Official Documents in Ordinary Language

Walking with Pope Francis intends to be an “appetizer,” encouraging the reader to go direct to the source and take in Francis’s practical wisdom and spirituality in his own words. It works both ways. Having read several, but not all of the works summarized in this book, I found here helpful reminders of what I had read before. I also found myself often going back to the originals when Fr. Jim’s summary begged for more.

Going from summary to Francis’s own words was made easy by the book’s format and the papal practice of writing in numbered paragraphs. Fr. Jim follows these numbers meticulously with brief accounts of or judicious quotes from each.

All of the above works are available in book form. But to read Pope Francis in original English translation, you needn’t spend any money. They are all also available on the Vatican website. Six of the writings covered in this book can be found in their entirety here: https://smip.org/online-chapel/pope-francis-writings/

Major Francis themes

One can’t get far into Walking with Pope Francis without seeing that mercy is important for this pope. That word appears over and over even before you get to The Face of Mercy in Chapter Three. Other themes appear often throughout the book. They include, in no particular order:

Decentralizing, going to the periphery, finding unity in diversity

Working together, because that’s the way we are saved; we cannot even believe on our own.

Opting for the poor and vulnerable

Being missionary disciples –I take that to mean learning and growing as we share what we have.

And at the same time respecting the others’ culture, inculturating the faith.

It seems Francis never ends without referring to Jesus’ mother.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lostinaoneacrewood/2023/12/04/francis-the-writing-pope-a-walk-through-some-major-works/