Some may think that the point of prayer is to get our own way with extra-terrestrial help, or to save us from facing the problems of life, or to provide an escape from 'reality', or to give an emotional uplift that makes you feel food. Some may think that prayer is a way of expanding our consciousness which is achieved by our own discipline and personal effort at self-improvement. These are caricatures of what Christian prayer really is. There may be a strand of truth in some of them, but they miss the real point of prayer.

From the age of fourteen until his death at the age of eighty-two, Pope John XXIII kept what he called his 'Journal of a Soul' - the record of his growth in holiness. Elected Pope at the age of seventy-eight he impressed the world with the breadth of his mind but also with his simplicity and his will to be at the service of others. This book covers the full span of his long career from the seminary at Bergamo to his brief but transformative papacy.His journal is a rare and intimate record of the spiritual life of a much-loved figure. As he wrote, 'my soul is in these pages.'

A commonly held impression is that Pope Francis is a compassionate shepherd and determined leader but that he lacks the intellectual depth of his recent predecessors. Massimo Borghesi’s The Mind of Pope Francis: Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Intellectual Journey dismantles that image. Borghesi recounts and analyzes, for the first time, Bergoglio’s intellectual formation, exploring the philosophical, theological, and spiritual principles that support the profound vision at the heart of this pope’s teaching and ministry. Central to that vision is the church as a coincidentia oppositorum, holding together what might seem to be opposing and irreconcilable realities. Among his guiding lights have been the Jesuit saints, Ignatius and Peter Faber; philosophers Gaston Fessard, Romano Guardini, and Alberto Methol Ferrer; and theologians Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Recognizing how these various strands have come together to shape the mind and heart of Jorge Mario Bergoglio offers essential insights into who he is and the way he is leading the church. Notably, this groundbreaking book is informed by four interviews provided to the author, via audio recordings, by the pope himself on his own intellectual formation, major portions of which are published here for the first time.