"What drove American Catholics in their long and arduous quest, full of twists and turns across more than a century, to win an American-born saint? The absence of American names in the canon of the saints left many feeling spiritually unmoored and disrespected - to be able to look at the same American scenes upon which a saint had gazed would be a joy and privilege, certainly. But believers also had another reason for cultivating homegrown holiness,...

Studies of young American Catholics over the last three decades suggest a growing crisis in the Catholic Church: compared to their elders, young Catholics are looking to the Church less as they form their identities, and fewer of them can even explain what it means to be Catholic and why that matters. Young Catholic America, the latest book based on the groundbreaking National Study of Youth and Religion, explores a crucial stage in the life of Catholics....

A fascinating, investigative dive . . . both alarming and enlightening. Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money The definitive account of how a group of American Catholic bishops are using dark money and allying with ultra-right evangelicals in an attempt to remake America . . . Seasoned Catholic journalist and former war correspondent Mary Jo McConahay tells the story of how the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have become one of the most...

"In this groundbreaking study, Shannen Dee Williams offers the first full historical treatment of Black Catholic sisters in the United States. Drawing upon a host of untapped sources, including previously sealed church records and oral histories, Subversive Habits recovers Black sisters' lives and labors as pioneering Black religious leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, desegregation foot soldiers, Black power activists, and womanist theologians....

"When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving unanswered questions about what he knew and did during World War II. Those questions have only grown and festered, making Pius XII one of the most controversial popes in Church history, especially now as the Vatican prepares to canonize him. In 2020, Pius XII's archives were finally opened, and David I. Kertzer--widely recognized as one of the world's...

A true, never-before-told story—discovered in a secret Vatican archive—of sex, poison, and lesbian initiation rites in a nineteenth-century convent.

In 1858, a German princess, recently inducted into the convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome, wrote a frantic letter to her cousin, a confidant of the Pope, claiming that she was being abused and feared for her life. What the subsequent investigation by the Church’s

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A powerful examination of the role of Catholicism in U.S. politics and in the life of Joseph R. Biden. After a dramatic election amid a raging pandemic, racial violence, economic collapse and historic national divisions that have threatened our democracy, Joe Biden succeeds Donald Trump as the 46th President of the United States. For Catholics, this is a momentous occasion in US public life, as he is the second Catholic to be elected to the nation's...