book Archives

Looking East: Book on celibacy barely acknowledges Eastern tradition

Jan 26, 2020

The controversy surrounding retired Pope Benedict XVI’s contribution to a new book on priestly celibacy demonstrates just how much both substance and appearances matter.

By Cindy Wooden

Author hopes families find his retelling of Christmas story ‘uplifting’

Dec 21, 2019

Last Christmas while watching “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas” with his son, Thomas Williams said it “suddenly hit” him that “nearly all the clever poetry surrounding Christmas has virtually nothing to do with Jesus Christ.”

By Julie Asher

Book aims to fill legal vacuum surrounding resigned popes

Jun 27, 2019

In his book, Italian seminarian Rosario Vitale calls on the Church to legislate on the status of retired pontiffs especially if future popes choose to follow in the path set by Pope Benedict XVI’s 2013 resignation.

By Claire Giangravè

New book captures Pope Francis’s ‘revolution of tenderness’

Jun 2, 2019

Pope Francis is “a giant who leaves his skin in the smallest ones; a man who becomes holy becoming one with the weakest; who’s afraid of neither tears nor hugs,” according to former spokesman Greg Burke in the foreword to a new book by Spanish journalist Eva Fernandez.

By Inés San Martín

Barron muses on evangelization, Bob Dylan and the infield fly rule

Oct 31, 2017

From baseball and Bob Dylan, Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles took away a strong core belief that the right way to expose someone to a new idea, a new way of life, is to start with what makes it beautiful, relentlessly help them see and feel that beauty, and only then introduce them to the structures and rules that make such a way of life possible.

By John L. Allen Jr.

Few new nuggets in book-length interview with Pope Francis

Sep 29, 2017

A new book-length interview with Pope Francis goes over much of the territory the pontiff has discussed in his previous interviews with various publications, but Austen Ivereigh says there are still some interesting points to be mined from ‘Politique et Societé’ [Politics and Society]. Ivereigh says the interviewer, French sociologist Dominique Wolton, should have dug deeper to reveal more of the man who is now sitting on the Chair of Peter.

By Austen Ivereigh

Vatican's finance czar: I'm not wasting money

Nov 5, 2015

In the wake of two new books in Italy detailing charges of Vatican overspending and corruption, the pope’s top financial official has dismissed claims of lavish outlays in his own department, insisting that a half-million euro spent in the first six months were related to legitimate start-up costs. A statement

By John L. Allen Jr.