How to Be Pope

How to Be Pope
Author: Piers Marchant
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2005-10-13
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9780811852210

Congratulations, Your Holiness, and welcome to your first day at the Holy See. After being elected by the College of Cardinals, you'll need to don the papal vestments and get right to work. Armed with this manual, compiled over the last 2,000 years, you'll be able to navigate the Why's, How's, and Who's of your new life as Pontifex Maximus. What is your official job title? Why do you need to choose a papal name? Who does your laundry? While the church has long maintained an aura of complete secrecy to outsiders, the facts, figures, and historical anecdotes found here give the crucial information you'll need to fulfill your papal duties. Detailed diagrams reveal significant locations within the Vaticanwhere to buy gas, where to mail a letter, St. Martha's Housewhile helpful illustrations demonstrate how to perform the papal wave, the uniform of the Swiss Guards, and how to tell the difference between a mitre and a stole. All this plus a Latin primer, tips on greeting world leaders, and a list of job benefits makes for an indispensable guide to performing the role of Successor to the Prince of the Apostles.

The Next Pope

The Next Pope
Author: Edward Pentin
Publisher: Sophia Institute Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1644133121

Watch the Highlights Video of the June 24 live panel discussion from Rome.??????? When Pope Francis' pontificate has passed, it's very likely that one of the nineteen cardinals featured in these pages will be elected to become the next Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, the spiritual leader of over a billion Catholics and the most influential and widely respected moral and religious figure in the world. Yet outside the Vatican walls, despite the considerable roles that some of these men play in the Church and in the world, few of them are known by the public — or even by their brother cardinals. Hence this book, an engrossing and thoroughly documented instrument through which a future pope may be known

The Pope who Would be King

The Pope who Would be King
Author: David I. Kertzer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2018
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0198827490

Days after the assassination of his prime minister in the middle of Rome in November 1848, Pope Pius IX found himself a virtual prisoner in his own palace. The wave of revolution that had swept through Europe now seemed poised to put an end to the popes' thousand-year reign over the Papal States, if not indeed to the papacy itself. Disguising himself as a simple parish priest, Pius escaped through a back door. Climbing inside the Bavarian ambassador's carriage, he embarked on a journey into a fateful exile.Only two years earlier Pius's election had triggered a wave of optimism across Italy. After the repressive reign of the dour Pope Gregory XVI, Italians saw the youthful, benevolent new pope as the man who would at last bring the Papal States into modern times and help create a new, unified Italian nation. But Pius found himself caught between a desire to please his subjects and a fear--stoked by the cardinals--that heeding the people's pleas would destroy the church. The resulting drama--with a colorful cast of characters, from Louis Napoleon and his rabble-rousing cousin Charles Bonaparte to Garibaldi, Tocqueville, and Metternich--was rife with treachery, tragedy, and international power politics.David Kertzer is one of the world's foremost experts on the history of Italy and the Vatican, and has a rare ability to bring history vividly to life. With a combination of gripping, cinematic storytelling, and keen historical analysis rooted in an unprecedented richness of archival sources, The Pope Who Would Be King sheds fascinating new light on the end of rule by divine right in the west and the emergence of modern Europe.

The Dictator Pope

The Dictator Pope
Author: Marcantonio Colonna
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2018-04-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 162157833X

Marcantonio Colonna's The Dictator Pope has rocked Rome and the entire Catholic Church with its portrait of an authoritarian, manipulative, and politically partisan pontiff. Occupying a privileged perch in Rome during the tumultuous first years of Francis’s pontificate, Colonna was privy to the shock, dismay, and even panic that the reckless new pope engendered in the Church’s most loyal and judicious leaders. The Dictator Pope discloses that Father Mario Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis) was so unsuited for ecclesiastical leadership that the head of his own Jesuit order tried to prevent his appointment as a bishop in Argentina. Behind the benign smile of the "people's pope" Colonna reveals a ruthless autocrat aggressively asserting the powers of the papacy in pursuit of a radical agenda.

To Change the Church

To Change the Church
Author: Ross Douthat
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1501146939

A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs in a book that is “must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of the West and the future of global Christianity” (Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option). Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker, “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.” In his “concise, rhetorically agile…adroit, perceptive, gripping account (The New York Times Book Review), Ross Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so dangerous: How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies. “A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism…To Change the Church is a fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis” (Kirkus Reviews). Engaging and provocative, this is “a pot-boiler of a history that examines a growing ecclesial crisis” (Washington Independent Review of Books).

All the Pope's Men

All the Pope's Men
Author: John L. Allen, Jr.
Publisher: Image
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0307423492

A fascinating and enlightening look at the world’s oldest and most mysterious institution, written by an American journalist with unparalleled knowledge about the Vatican's past and present. The sexual abuse scandals that shook American and British Catholicism in 2002 brought to light a long-standing cultural gap between the English-speaking Catholic world and the Vatican. In Rome, the crisis was often seen as an attack on the Church mounted by money-hungry lawyers, a hostile press, and liberal activists who used it as a way to turn attention on such concerns as celibacy, women’s ordination, and lay empowerment. When the Vatican struck down the U.S. bishops’ draft for handling allegations of sexual abuse, many saw it as an attempt to curb an independent American Catholic church. Yet, as time passed, it became clear that the Vatican’s well-founded concerns about due process were shared by most liberal U.S. bishops and canon lawyers. ALL THE POPE’S MEN is a lucid, in-depth guide to the sometimes puzzling, often incomprehensible inner workings of the Vatican. It reveals how decisions are made, how papal bureaucrats think, and how careers in the Roman Curia are shaped. It debunks the myths that have fed the distrust and suspicions many English-speaking Catholics harbor about the way the Vatican conducts its business, explains who really wields the power, and offers entertaining profiles of the personalities, historical and present-day, who have wielded that power for good and for bad. A thoughtful analysis of the recent sexual abuse crisis sheds light on how the Vatican perceives the Church in the United States. Balanced, lively, and filled with Vatican history and lore, ALL THE POPE’S MEN provides the general reader with an authoritative picture of the highly charged relationship between the Vatican and the richest, most influential national Catholic church in the world today.

Absolute Power

Absolute Power
Author: Paul Collins
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2018-03-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1541762002

The sensational story of the last two centuries of the papacy, its most influential pontiffs, troubling doctrines, and rise in global authority In 1799, the papacy was at rock bottom: The Papal States had been swept away and Rome seized by the revolutionary French armies. With cardinals scattered across Europe and the next papal election uncertain, even if Catholicism survived, it seemed the papacy was finished. In this gripping narrative of religious and political history, Paul Collins tells the improbable success story of the last 220 years of the papacy, from the unexalted death of Pope Pius VI in 1799 to the celebrity of Pope Francis today. In a strange contradiction, as the papacy has lost its physical power--its armies and states--and remained stubbornly opposed to the currents of social and scientific consensus, it has only increased its influence and political authority in the world.

The Two Popes

The Two Popes
Author: Anthony McCarten
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-01-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250207916

THE STORY BEHIND THE SCREENPLAY OF THE TWO POPES, THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING ANTHONY HOPKINS AND JONATHAN PRYCE (PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS THE POPE). From the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of The Theory of Everything and Darkest Hour comes the fascinating and revealing tale of an unprecedented transfer of power, and of two very different men - who both happen to live in the Vatican. In February 2013, the arch-conservative Pope Benedict XVI made a startling announcement: he would resign, making him the first pope to willingly vacate his office in over 700 years. Reeling from the news, the College of Cardinals rushed to Rome to congregate in the Sistine Chapel to pick his successor. Their unlikely choice? Francis, the first non-European pope in 1,200 years, a one time tango club bouncer, a passionate soccer fan, a man with the common touch. Why did Benedict walk away at the height of power, knowing his successor might be someone whose views might undo his legacy? How did Francis - who used to ride the bus to work back in his native Buenos Aires - adjust to life as leader to a billion followers? If, as the Church teaches, the pope is infallible, how can two living popes who disagree on almost everything both be right? Having immersed himself in these men's lives to write the screenplay for The Two Popes, Anthony McCarten masterfully weaves their stories into one gripping narrative. From Benedict and Francis's formative experiences in war-torn Germany and Argentina to the sexual abuse scandal that continues to rock the Church to its foundations, to the intrigue and the occasional comedy of life in the Vatican, The Two Pope glitters with the darker and the lighter details of one of the world's most opaque but significant institutions.

The Next Pope

The Next Pope
Author: Peter Hebblethwaite
Publisher: HarperOne
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1995
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Hebblethwaite profiles the most likely candidates for the papacy and reveals the intricate and highly politicized process by which the college of cardinals will choose among them. Reviewing trends that have shaped previous elections, he then examines the issues that will influence the next conclave's decision, including ordination of women. 8-page photo insert. National ads/media.

The Political Pope

The Political Pope
Author: George Neumayr
Publisher: Center Street
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2017-05-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1455570141

The untold story of the left's efforts to politicize the Vatican and the battle to stop it-before the Catholic Church as we know it is destroyed. Pope Francis is the most liberal pope in the history of the Catholic Church. He is not only championing the causes of the global Left, but also undermining centuries-old Catholic teaching and practice. In the words of the late radical Tom Hayden, his election was "more miraculous, if you will, than the rise of Barack Obama in 2008." But to Catholics in the pews, his pontificate is a source of alienation. It is a pontificate, at times, beyond parody: Francis is the first pope to approve of adultery, flirt with proposals to bless gay marriages and cohabitation, tell atheists not to convert, tell Catholics to not breed "like rabbits," praise the Koran, support a secularized Europe, and celebrate Martin Luther. At a time of widespread moral relativism, Pope Francis is not defending the Church's teachings but diluting them. At a time of Christian persecution, he is not strengthening Catholic identity but weakening it. Where other popes sought to save souls, he prefers to "save the planet" and play politics, from habitual capitalism-bashing to his support for open borders and pacifism. In The Political Pope, George Neumayr gives readers what the media won't: a bracing look at the liberal revolution that Pope Francis is advancing in the Church. To the radical academic Cornel West, "Pope Francis is a gift from heaven." To many conservative Catholics, he is the worst pope in centuries.