Pope Francis Among the Wolves: The Inside Story of a Revolution
ISBN: 9780231540087
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Francis Pope 1936-; Catholic Church -- History -- 21st century;

Vaticanista Politi (His Holiness) is one of a cadre of Italian journalists who have spent their professional lives watching popes come, go, and pronounce. Unlike ostensibly neutral American journalists, Politi makes his pro-Francis sympathies clear. He knows the home team of Italian prelates and politicians who give the Vatican its immediate national context. His chapter on the Vatican Bank and its scandals is especially helpful, though it requires close reading if one is unfamiliar with the institutions and people involved. He's much less familiar with Francis's 40 years of serving the church in Argentina, but has gone there to interview those who worked with him during that part of his career. Politi's well-sourced reporting is evident in voluminous notes, citing enough reporters, sources, and internal intrigue to provide grist for a variety of interpretations of Francsis's first two years as pope. Politi certainly delivers on the subtitle's promise of a look inside the byzantine halls of the institutional Catholic Church. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Marco Politi has been a leading international expert on Vatican issues for more than forty years. He is a journalist with the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano and was the Vatican correspondent for La Repubblica . With Carl Bernstein, he wrote the international best-seller His Holiness . His other books include Pope Wojtyla: The Farewell ; The Return of God ; I, Gay Priest ; The Church That Says No ; and Joseph Ratzinger: Crisis of a Papacy .

William McCuaig is a translator living in Montreal.

hidden image for function call