Church History

Saint John of the Cross is the Church's premier teacher on contemplative prayer. Catholic tradition even calls him the Mystical Doctor. The sixteenth-century Carmelite priest not only wrote four massive treatises on the spiritual life, along with some of...

On August 9, 1945, an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing tens of thousands of people in the blink of an eye, while fatally injuring and poisoning thousands more. Among the survivors was Takashi Nagai, a pioneer in radiology...

On June 14, 1921, a priest knocks at the convent in San Giovanni Rotondo. He is in his early forties and wears a simple cassock, but he is no ordinary priest. He is Bishop Raffaello Carlo Rossi, future cardinal and the Apostolic Visitor sent by the Holy...

The mystery of death strikes at the core of the human soul. We instinctively recoil at the pain of losing loved ones, and as we grapple, we are quick to seek remedies to console ourselves. There is no one better suited to assuage our grief than the...

The Confessions of Saint Augustine is considered one of the greatest Christian classics of all time. It is an extended poetic, passionate, intimate prayer that Augustine wrote as an autobiography sometime after his conversion, to confess his sins and...

Here for the first time is a captivating autobiography of a French girl raised in the wild Moroccan frontier by her communist parents who fled France and vowed that "no one would speak to her of God and influence the development of her mind with...

Rome in the year 590 a.d. A plague is tearing through the city. Pope Pelagius II is dead. Outside the walls, Lombard soldiers are raising their swords. What can save the Eternal City? All eyes, and all hopes, are on the next Pope. Veteran writer Sigrid...

Italian Carmelite Antonio Maria Sicari's vibrant biographies of saints—from Augustine to Catherine of Siena to Faustina Kowalska—have been read across Europe for decades. In How Saints Die, Sicari turns to the most difficult challenge in the...

What if there’s a better Christian religion than Catholicism? One that has true apostolic doctrines, a more beautiful and ancient liturgy, and freedom from all that “pope” baggage—and valid sacraments, too. That’s what...

Emil Kapaun—priest, soldier and Korean War hero—was a rare man. He was awarded posthumously the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, and is also being considered by the Vatican for canonization as a saint.Just as...

This is the first archaeological and historical biography of the most fascinating and revered woman in history, the Mother of Christ. Millions of faithful around the world invoke her as their Queen, Protectress and Advocate. But who was this...

Very few people know that Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote a major work on Joan of Arc. Still fewer know that he considered it not only his most important but also his best work. He spent twelve years in research and many months in France doing archival...