In Your Eyes I See My Words, Volume 3 brings together the homilies and speeches of Archbishop Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio from 2009 through his election as Pope Francis on March 13, 2013. These writings provide an intimate glimpse into the theological, philosophical, scientific, and cultural-educational currents that forged the steady, loving, and nurturing leadership style with which Bergoglio guided the Church in Buenos Aires. That style has now done the same for the Church from Rome, a Church rocked by financial and moral scandals, and a world shaken by the first global pandemic in a century.

These writings were kneaded-a word he uses when talking about the work of molding the souls and character of youth and seminarians-in the relationships he formed in his bus rides to work and in his intense contact with all segments of the population. Because of that careful and prayerful process of kneading they have found their full development in Bergoglio’s writing as Pope Francis, especially in Evangelii gaudium (November 2013); Gaudete et exsultate, On the call to sanctity (March 2018); and his encyclical Laudato si’ (May 2015). In this final volume of Bergoglio’s homilies and papers we meet European theologians and thinkers such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, and Bergoglio’s Uruguayan philosopher and friend, Methol Ferre, the literary figure Miguel Angel Asturias, and Enrique Santos Discepolo, a singer and composer of tangos that decry corruption.

In a prophetic conclusion, the last homily of this volume is an outline of the roadmap Pope Francis has followed throughout his papacy: one defined by ongoing love and care for God’s people and that seeks to spread God’s merciful anointing to those living on the margins of life.