“The Popes: Histories and Secrets”, by Claudio Rendina, translated by Paul McCusker

 

672 pages, Seven Locks Press, ISBN-13: 978-1931643139 

The Popes: Histories and Secrets by Claudio Rendina (and translated by Paul McCusker) is not a fascinating or spellbinding read (far from it), but rather a mini-encyclopedia that provides a chronological description of the personalities and histories of the 264 popes in Catholic Church history; each entry explores the man, the times, the controversies, the miracles and the political significance of the men who assumed the mantel of the Vicar of Christ. There are more typos than I like to see in a scholarly work, although fewer per page than I accept as a given in mass-market paperbacks, and I just can’t be sure whether those glitches came in the original writing or whether they are the fault of the translation, but they’re there in all of their irritating glory. I will say that it would seem to me, as a non-Catholic, that it would be difficult to read this book without having a severe strain placed on one’s faith in the Church, if one had any to start with; historically, so many of the leaders of the church were clearly not very pious or holy individuals, but were rather venal, adulterous cads, more interested in matters of their political power in the world of the flesh rather than in matters of the spirit. But it must not be impossible to do so, as one would assume that it would be even more difficult to write this book without losing faith than to merely read it, and it seems that the author has succeeded in doing so.