You might think first of the Oscar-winning 2018 film when you hear the words “Green Book.” But that means you didn’t study theology or ministry in a Catholic graduate program in the last few decades. If you did, “the Green Book” is a valuable resource that very likely still sits on your bookshelf, and you’d still recognize its plain white-text title and authors’ names at first sight: Social Analysis: Linking Faith and Justice, by Joe Holland and Peter Henriot, S.J. 

This seminal text, which began life as a booklet in 1980 and was first published as a larger volume by Orbis Books three years later (full disclosure: I worked for Orbis from 2012-17), introduced several generations to the “pastoral circle,” as well as related methods of social analysis and theological reflection over the last several decades. It has since sold more than 100,000 copies and been translated into five languages. 

One of its authors, Father Henriot, died earlier this month at the Jesuit infirmary in Los Gatos, Calif., at the age of 90. While American Catholics might remember him best for the text mentioned above, for his social justice advocacy and for his work on praxis-oriented theology in the United States, he was better known in the minds of many for his decades of service to the church in Africa.

Father Henriot was born in Tacoma, Wash., in 1936, and attended Bellarmine High School there. After two years at Santa Clara University, he entered what was then the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus in 1956. During his Jesuit formation, he earned a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1967. After theology studies (he was part of the first group of Jesuits to relocate to the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley from rural Alma College in California to join the Graduate Theological Union), he was ordained to the priesthood in 1970. 

After a year of post-graduate research at Harvard, Father Henriot helped to co-found the Center of Concern, a Washington, D.C., think tank on Catholic social teaching and its application to global economic and political issues sponsored by the Society of Jesus and the U.S. Catholic bishops. He worked there from 1971 until 1988. “Throughout all those years, he was never grim, sad, angry or negative. He was always encouraging, affirming, and calling us to do better, to do more, to do what we could to change the world,” remembered his lifelong friend and colleague at the time, the peace activist Father John Dear, in an email to America. “He seemed to believe we could do anything, that everything was possible, that we have the power at our disposal to create a more just, more peaceful world.”

“Peter Henriot, S.J., and his colleagues at the Center of Concern in Washington, D.C., were the first to popularize Catholic social teaching as the church’s ‘best-kept secret,’” wrote Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M., in America in 2005. “Their perception, that even among Catholics the church’s social teaching was not well known, seems to have been widely shared. In 1997, at the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for America, the bishops, with a firm push from their Latin American members, proposed to Pope John Paul II that a catechism of Catholic social teaching be prepared to disseminate this treasure better among the Catholic people, in order to help them read the signs of the times with a view to social action.”

The result—if incomplete and not entirely satisfactory to the minds of its original promotors—was the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, still an important teaching document and resource.

After a sabbatical year in Zambia, Father Henriot (pronounced “Hen-Ree-Oh” if you were an American or a Francophone, but “Hen-Ree-Ott” by some Anglophone colleagues) became in 1990 the director of the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, where he would work for the next two decades. “He had every intention of starting a school and serving people on the ground, but he was immediately inundated with requests to speak in every diocese in Africa,” remembered Father Dear. “He ended up sowing seeds of justice across the continent.” 

“Through his ministry, he brought together faith, social analysis and practical action in the pursuit of justice and the service of the poor…. Fr. Henriot leaves behind a legacy that spans continents and generations,” wrote the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in a statement after his death. “For Zambia and Malawi, his ministry formed part of a long Jesuit tradition of accompanying communities, engaging social realities through faith and working for a more just society.”

In 2011, he finally got his wish and became the director of development at Loyola Jesuit Secondary School in Kasungu, Malawi.

Father Henriot returned to the United States in 2016 but continued his social justice advocacy and work for the Malawi school until 2023, when he moved to Los Gatos. 

He was also a longtime contributor to America, publishing his first article for the magazine in 1964 (yes, you read that right). His most recent contribution was a 2008 essay evaluating “Populorum Progressio” on its 40th anniversary, 

“His work helped shape a tradition of linking rigorous social analysis with Christian reflection and a preferential concern for people living in poverty and on the margins of society,” wrote his colleagues at the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection. “As the Society of Jesus, the people of Zambia and Malawi, and all who knew and worked with Fr. Henriot mourn his passing, they also give thanks for his life and ministry. His was a life spent seeking justice, nurturing faith, accompanying the poor and investing in people.”

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Our poetry selection for this week is “The Highest Boughs,” by James Matthew Wilson. Readers can view all of America’s published poems here.

Other recent Catholic Book Club columns:

Happy reading!

James T. Keane

James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.