This little booklet assembles some the Popeís orbiter dicta since his election, with comments on the Church, on the sacraments, on Our Lady, on the role of women in the Church, and insightful comments on himself and his earlier experiences as a leader, and how he, as an admitted sinner, has learnt from those experiences. …

Though well covered by all the media on its appearance this English language edition of the Pope’s first apostolic exhortation may come to be seen as an import landmark document, similar to Mater et Magister issued by John XXIII. This challenge to ‘complacency at every level’ should be widely read by all Catholics, who have…

100 Years Later: The Legacy of the 1913 Lock-Out, edited by Mary Muldowney with Ida Milne (Seven Towers, €12.99/£10.99)

The A-Z of C. S. Lewis, by Colin Duriez (Lion Hudson, £14.99 / €17.99)

Democracy and Media Decadence, by John Keane (Cambridge University Press, €21.58 pb / £17.99)

Unheard Story: Dublin Archdiocese and The Murphy Report, by Pádraig McCarthy (Londubh Books, €14.99 / £17.99; ISBN 9781907535352)

This week has seen the passing of Twelfth Night, on the eve of the Epiphany, the feast celebrating the visit of the Wise Men to the birthplace of Jesus. Traditionally this marked, not so much the realisation of Jesusís divinity, as the end of the long winter season, the first tremor of spring perhaps, the…