Da Pope had his inauguration mass
Pope Leo XIV addressed thousands in St Peter’s Square after the mass and highlighted the war in Ukraine, while warning against ‘hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference’. Excerpts from This Week, Those Books, with relevant reads. Sign up at https://thisweekthosebooks.substack.com/ and get the post and readthrough the day it drops
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The Big Story:
The May 7 papal conclave ended with the election of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, now Leo XIV.
It was a consequential election and mattered to 1.4 billion people across the planet…
This Week, Those Books:
A new book on the new pope’s homilies
A novel on the papal conclave
An account of minutiae and magnificence in choosing a pope
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The Back Story:
The first papal conclave in the Sistine Chapel was in 1492.
The 2025 papal election was considered one of the most unpredictable ever…
The conclave that elected Pope Francis had cardinals from just 48 countries. This one had cardinals from 71 countries…
There were Italian popes for 500 years from the 16th century.
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God Loves Everyone: The Essential Pope Leo XIV, Selected Homilies and Sermons: The Voice of Robert Francis Prevost, from Peru to the Papacy
Publisher: Huayruro Editorial
Year: 2025
Some of Cardinal Prevost’s homilies were already available in book form, but this new volume has been issued in record time… Huayruro says the book “was made with urgency and reverence”.
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Conclave: A Novel
By: Robert Harris
Publisher: Hutchinson
Year: 2016
It is both a pity — and a blessing — that this superb Robert Harris novel is so overshadowed by the 2024 film based on it.
Conclave, the film that stars big names such as Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini, became a box office hit and won an Oscar.
It’s fair to say more people worldwide have seen Conclave than read it, in the six months since the film was released.
That is both good and bad. Good, because Conclave, the film, offers a glimpse into the secretive process of choosing a pope. It sheds light on the little-known rituals…But the film seems to cast the book somewhat into shadow. This is unfortunate as it’s a really good novel, in technicolour text…The plot revolves around the tensions — ideology, ego, long-buried secrets– that come into play when cardinals meet to choose a new pope after the death of the incumbent…
Choice quotes:
Once, God explained all mysteries. Now He has been usurped by conspiracy theorists. They are the heretics of the age…
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Selecting the Pope: Uncovering the Mysteries of Papal Elections
By: Greg Tobin
Publisher: Sterling
Year: 2003
This book offers valuable detail about the legislative procedure used to select a pope and its historical and religious significance. The author, former editor of a Catholic newspaper in Newark, New Jersey, notes the dissonance at the heart of the ritual of choosing a pope…
Interestingly, for all that Francis is considered the pope who did the most to enlarge the electoral college of cardinals, the process started long before, with Pope Pius XII…in 1946
Originally published at This Week, Those Books
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