The Catholic journalist and commentator Austen Ivereigh, a former deputy editor of The Tablet and adviser to the former Archbishop of Westminster, appears frequently on TV and radio news programmes. A regular contributor to the Guardian’s Comment is Free Belief section, he is also European correspondent for America Magazine, the New York-based US Catholic weekly, where he also blogs.

He is the joint founder and co-ordinator of Catholic Voices, a project to train Catholics to put the Church’s case in media interviews and public debates, which created a team of 20 speakers to be available to the media during the papal visit, and to counter the arguments of the Protest the Pope campaign. Austen has appeared regularly on Battle of Ideas panels, speaking on faith, immigration and population control among other topics. He has long been involved as a campaigner and community organiser with London Citizens / Citizens UK, the civil-society alliance which introduced the London Living Wage and secured an end to the detention of immigration children. He is the author of Faithful Citizens: a practical guide to Catholic social teaching and community organising (Darton, Longman & Todd 2010).