No one had ever rendered the voice of a Pope into the sort of English you can imagine someone actually speaking until Austen Ivereigh was invited to work with Pope Francis on Let Us Dream – the extract in this week’s issue is unusually crisp and engaging as pontificating goes. But it was hard work.

“Not only was I working to produce two simultaneous texts, in English and Spanish,” Austen tells us, “but I was also coordinating a translation team of five who were putting the text into Italian, French, German, Portuguese and Polish as it was being put together.”

One challenge came when Francis described his three “personal Covids”, which included his famous “exile” in Córdoba 30 years ago, when, as the Pope puts it, he was sent off the soccer field and put on the bench because of some decisions he had made as Jesuit provincial. He admits they were right. “I could be very harsh”. He told Austen: Me pasaron la boleta, which is a very Argentine way of saying “They sent me the bill”. How to translate that into English? The primary readership for the book is American, so Austen rendered it: “They sent me the check.” But when Austen’s wife and trusted collaborator Linda read the draft she came into his study with furrowed brow: “I don’t understand: why did his Jesuit superiors send him a cheque if they were annoyed with him?”