The Francis Papacy: Pastoral Conversion, Troubled Reform

Pope Francis is attempting to lead a grand "pastoral conversion" of the Catholic Church, away from ideological preoccupations and institutional maintenance toward pastoral concern for flesh-and-blood people. At the same time, he's presiding over an attempted reform of the church which, at times, seems more robust in rhetoric than reality.

John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, an independent Catholic news site in partnership with the Knights of Columbus, and previously served both as a senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and later as associate editor of the Boston Globe. He is the senior Vatican analyst for CNN, the author of eleven books on the Vatican and Catholic affairs, and a popular speaker both in the United States and abroad. The London Tablet has called Allen, "the most authoritative writer on Vatican affairs in the English language", and renowned papal biographer George Weigel has called him, "the best Anglophone Vatican reporter ever." When Allen was called upon to put the first question to Pope Benedict XVI aboard the papal plane en route to the United States in April 2008, the Vatican spokesperson said to the pope, "Holy Father, this man needs no introduction." That's not just a Vatican judgment. Veteran religion writer Kenneth Woodward of Newsweek described Allen as, "the journalist other 'reporters and not a few cardinals' look to for the inside story on how all the pope's men direct the world's largest church. John Allen's work is admired across ideological divides. The late liberal commentator Fr. Andrew Greeley called his writing, "indispensable," while the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, a conservative, called Allen's reporting "possibly the best source of information on the Vatican published in the United States."  Allen's most recent book is, The Francis Miracle: Inside the Transformation of the Pope and the Church, from Time.  John lives in Rome with his wife, Elise, and their two pugs, Gus and Mina. He grew up in Western Kansas, and holds a Master's degree in Religious Studies from the University of Kansas.