Leaving no stone unturned in his effort to chronicle the life and legacy of Maryknoll Father John J. Considine (1897–1982), Robert Hurteau masterfully unpacks the story of this visionary and prolific US missionary priest who was known and admired, nationally and internationally, as a catalytic agent of global consciousness among mission-minded Catholics and as a perceptive reader of the “signs of the times” as well as their implications for an emerging world church.

Offering engaging descriptions and critical assessments of Considine's ways of proceeding over the course of eighty-five years, Hurteau traces the encounters and movements that defined Considine's life from the time of his birth in New Bedford, Massachusetts, until his death in Maryknoll, New York. Considine joined the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America in 1915, and his preparation for priesthood included leadership in the Catholic Student Missionary Crusade as well as graduate studies at the Catholic University of America. Assigned to Rome in 1924, he dedicated himself to missiological research and teaching, along with the establishment of FIDES and the pursuit of further training in missiography and ethnology. Mindful of the ways in which Considine's mission study tours in Africa and Asia during the early 1930s exposed him to the sobering truths of grassroots missionary activities, Hurteau explains how such experiences altered Considine's perspective on missionary activity and influenced his style of leadership subsequent to his election to the Maryknoll General Council in 1934.

Hurteau takes account of Considine's exhaustive corpus of mission-oriented writings as well as his edited publications, including The Field Afar, and examines Considine's particular contributions to world mission, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue, including his collaboration with the leaders of other missionary societies in the establishment of the US Mission Secretariat. As he charts the movements of this “Vatican insider” turned “Mission innovator,” Hurteau discusses the influences of Vatican II and the social movements of the 1960s on Considine, highlighting in particular his efforts as the director of the Latin American Bureau of the US Catholic Bishops from 1960 to 1967 as well as his leadership of the Papal Volunteers for Latin America (PAVLA) and the Catholic Inter-American Cooperation Program (CICOP). Noting Considine's intention to make way for a new generation, Hurteau sheds light on Considine's retirement years and the continued beating of his “worldwide heart” amid the challenges of declining health and diminishment that marked his final days.

Throughout the book, Hurteau delves deeply into the details of Considine's extensive network of relationships with individuals, groups, and institutions and meticulously examines the ways in which these relationships contributed to Considine's ability to offer creative, constructive, and timely contributions, not only to the study of missiology and the training of missionaries, but also to the urgently needed ongoing formation of church leaders—bishops, priests, religious and lay activists. In this regard Considine, through his personal presence, eyewitness experiences, and provocative inspiring reflections, elicited in the hearts and minds of his many audiences a higher degree of global consciousness as well as a heightened awareness of the complex realities, competing claims, and hope-filled aspirations of a world church made up of diverse peoples and cultures. Observing the ways in which Considine was both a beneficiary of a culturally constituted American exceptionalism and one of its most incisive critics, Hurteau underscores the tensions and ambiguities reflected in the interactive dynamics of church-state relationships, of American foreign policy and the policies of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, of U.S. foreign missionaries, and the dramatic socioeconomic and geopolitical changes taking place in fields afar.

Scholarly, yet accessible to a variety of audiences, this book draws on a fascinating and impressive collection of archival documents, historical records, and personal accounts related to the formidable figure of Fr. John J. Considine, MM. For those whose ecclesial imaginations are stirred by the prospect of tracing the evolution of world Christianity during the twentieth century from a US Roman Catholic perspective, this book is a tour de force when it comes to providing both a method and a compelling narrative for doing missiology as biography.