ROME - At last John Cornwell has found a pope he likes and admires, Francis, and he explains why in this book, after others on why he did not like John Paul II or Benedict XVI.

  He inserts acounts of his experience as son of a mixed marriage which ran into hurtful Church rigidity. He sees Francis as replacing this with a long-awaited merciful Church ready to listen to the maginalised and suffering rather than merely repeating laws.

  Cornwell welcomes a pope who is like a compassionate parish priest rather than upholding encrusted Roman traditions – for him 'interrupted' means discontinuity in an institution which previously boasted of its continuity.

  Francis has tried to recapture the confidence in dialogue with the world which marked the Vatican Council, but much has changed since it ended in 1965. The clerical abuse scandal and Vatican financial  shenanigans have done serious damage to the Church. The sexual revolution, social media and coronavirus have tranformed a society which is not as interested in dialogue with the Church as it was thought to be at the Vatican Council. In dialogue the Vatican often seems to have a cultural cringe.

  Cornwell does not approach his subject with an overview of the pontificate but examines some of its key events or moments: whether divorced Catholics should be able to remarry, the Synods, the role of women, papal encyclicals, relations with China, clerical sexual abuse and so on.  He summarises the situations but does not always add an analysis.

  He acknowledges criicism of Francis but is always his tribune, praisng him as less attached to rules than to helping people, no matter their circumstances,

  Francis has undeniable qualities and high aspirations but, after eight years as pope, he still has huge problems. He favours a synodal approach but the Church in Germany threatens to carry this to the point of schism. Sectors of US, African and Polish bishops' conferences are troubled by his vision. Vatican finances remain controversial and the lay employees recently signed a petition protesting pay cuts. Accused of being contradictory and confusing, he is in danger of being too conservative for progressives and too progressive for conservatives.

  Despite the qualities of Francis which Cornwell praises, he could have taken more account of the difficulties of a pontificate whose outcome is still hanging in the balance.

Church, Interrupted: Havoc & Hope: The Tender Revolt of Pope Francis

John Cornwell, Chronicle Books

304 pages