Matera is a small town in southern Italy famous for two things: its astonishing rock churches (named a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1993) and its poverty. There is hardly an electric light or a wire in sight. The panorama, the hollow cave-rooms gaping like empty eye sockets and shadowy rupestral churches still decorated with […]
The family is “one of the most precious goods of humanity,” St. John Paul II said in his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio. And today, the family is more than ever at the center of the concern and attention of the Church. Pope Francis has decided to dedicate two Synods of Bishops to the family — […]
By Luca Caruso “The reason my Salesian brothers thought it right in conscience to choose me as Don Bosco’s tenth successor is part of the mystery of the life of a believer.” These are the words of the Rector Major of the Salesians, Father Angel Fernandez Artime, in a book of interviews entitled Don Bosco […]
By Luca Caruso How can God be brought into the context of the city? This is the question at the heart of Argentinian writer Carlos Maria Galli’s new third edition of his book, God Lives in the City, published by the Vatican Publishing House and presented in Rome on March 3, at the Church of […]
Vatican City, February 20, 2015 – “Humanity will not find peace while hunger remains undefeated: while there still exist both people who feast daily and, whether on their doorstep or the other side of the planet, others who are dying of hunger.” This is one of the theses maintained in Terra e Cibo (“Land and […]
“I started attending seminary in 1956. In August of 1957 I came down with pneumonia. I almost died. They operated on my lung. Father Pozzoli [a Salesian] came to visit me during my illness. In my second year of seminary I had begun to be aware of a call to the religious life. And thus, […]
The Compilatio Assisiensis, or Assisi Compilation, is a hagiographic work from the 13th century, generally thought to be “difficult” because of its fragmentary nature and the particular structure of its text. But it is a document of inestimable worth, being one of the most authentic testimonies concerning St. Francis of Assisi and the origins of […]
Le monete della Zecca di Gela (“The Coins of the Mint of Gela”) is the title of this bilingual (Italian, English) volume published by the Vatican Publishing House. It showcases the coins of the ancient Sicilian city of Gela, preserved both at the Archeological Museum of Sicily and at the Vatican Apostolic Library’s Numismatic Cabinet, […]
In Praise of Dignity is a wide-ranging reflection on human dignity and its various aspects. Published by the Vatican Publishing House, its author is Giovanni Maria Flick, Professor Emeritus of Penal Law at Rome’s Luiss University and President Emeritus of the Italian Constitutional Court. The importance of reflecting on the meaning of the concept of […]
Cardinal Lluís Martínez Sistach, Archbishop of Barcelona, Spain, guides readers on a journey to discover Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia Basilica and its creator, architect Antoni Gaudí, in a new volume from the Vatican Publishing House, Gaudí: The Man, the Artist, the Christian. “The publication of this volume comes at a propitious moment,” Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, Secretary […]
Starting December 5 in bookstores, readers have been able to find books with the texts of Pope Francis’ morning homilies, his Wednesday catechesis and his Sunday Angelus addresses, as well as his Letter to Consecrated People, and the important speeches he made during his recent travels to Strasbourg, France, and to Turkey. The Vatican Publishing […]
“When I pray, God breathes in me.” This is the opening phrase of the 40-page prayer book signed by Francis and handed out to the faithful present in St. Peter’s Square during the Sunday, December 14 Angelus in Rome, which included the traditional “Bambinelli Blessing” or blessing of images of the Baby Jesus. The cover […]
The Historical Atlas of Charity by Juan María Laboa is a co-publication of Libreria Editrice Vaticana (the Vatican Press) and Jaca Book, in large-format with full-color illustrations that reproduce 20 centuries of Christian art and photographs documenting concrete examples of charity promoted by the Church in her efforts to help the suffering and the needy. […]
The Pontifical Council for the Family has come out — just in time for the Synod — with a monumental compendium of magisterial teaching on marriage and the family: an Enchiridion della famiglia e della vita (a “Handbook for the Family and for Life”). The work is published by the Vatican Press. The chief editor […]
More than 1,000 different books spread out on tables in the shadow of a great dome constructed out of books in the shape of the cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica. Such was the Holy See’s booth at the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (Turin International Book Fair) which this year made the Holy See […]
