The Catholic Church
What Everyone Needs to Know®
Updated Edition
John L. Allen, Jr.
Reviews and Awards
Reviews of the previous edition: "An excellent handbook for those who want (or need) to know more about the Catholic Church and for those who think they already know it all." -- Publishers Weekly
"John Allen is the English-speaking world's most informed, most insightful and most balanced commentator on the Roman Catholic Church today."--America
''Paints a fair-minded picture of the Roman Catholic strain of the faith, its beliefs, its worship and its structures. [Allen] gets behind the image of stern Catholic uniformity and begins to show what a remarkably diverse body this really is.'' --Times Literary Supplement
"Allen's engaging writing keeps readers' attention and interest... Highly recommended." --CHOICE
"The best Anglophone Vatican reporter ever."--George Weigel, author of Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II
"The journalist other reporters-and not a few cardinals-look to for the inside story on how all the pope's men direct the world's largest church."--Kenneth Woodward, Newsweek
"The most authoritative writer on Vatican affairs in the English language."--The Tablet