Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism in the United States: The Challenge of Becoming a Church for the Poor

Bishop Robert W. McElroy published "A Church for the Poor" in America Magazine on Oct. 21, 2013. Following conversations with colleagues at Santa Clara University, the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, and Faith in Public Life, the Lane Center pulled together a roundtable of scholars, activists, and religious leaders to meet with Bishop McElroy and discuss how best to support his challenge, engage the Catholic intellectual tradition, and transform the public political conversation across the western United States and the rest of the country. On April 4, 2014, 20 participants, including Bishop McElroy and the authors in this volume, met on the campus of the University of San Francisco for a daylong gathering centered on the issue of poverty and the task of getting poverty back on the political agenda for the American Catholic Church. This volume combines the voices of theologians and activists, ministers and ethicists. Such collaboration, we believe, is crucial for taking on the challenge initiated by Pope Francis and contextualized in the U.S. by Bishop McElroy because becoming the church of the poor and for the poor necessitates multiple levels of transformation-political, moral, theological, and personal.