Art/Music/Culture

The Vatican, comprising the Apostolic Palace, St. Peter's Basilica, and various other buildings, serves as the headquarters of the Catholic Church. It has done so for nearly two millennium ever since the first Pope, St. Peter, made it his home.

Thousands of Catholics flock to the Vatican and its iconic basilica each year. But what do you really know about this great basilica and the city that houses it?

Here, Father Jeffrey Kirby takes you on a whirlwind tour of this little country (yes, Vatican City is its own country, Fact # 2) and uncovers the secrets and surprising facts about the city, and its famous church.

Discover what language degree you need to work a Vatican ATM, what archi tectural feature of St. Peter's is a map of the universe, and even what the pope's license plate number is. Along the way, you'll find the deep theological meaning woven into the design and architectural features of St. Peter's Basilica and Vatican.

Whether you've already been to Rome or are still planning your first trip, 101 Surprising Facts About the Vatican will transport you to Basilica and City at the heart of the Catholic Church and enable you to appreciate them like never before.

The Catholic Church has a long and glorious history of sacred art. From the earliest etchings of Christian symbols on the walls of the catacombs to the exuberant works of the Baroque era, from the shared patrimony of iconography that links East with West to the monastic revival of the nineteenth century that gave us the St. Benedict medal, Catholic art is astonishing in its variety and diversity of styles.

But for too many, Catholic art is viewed as something largely in the past. This collection emphatically says, "Not so!"

This bound volume of eighteen works of sacred art by Catholic artists will convince you that the great artistic tradition of the Church is alive and well. Each work in this collection is printed on an 8" x 10" detachable page, so that the work may be removed and easily framed in your home.

The nine artists represented here are Matthew Alderman, Neilson Carlin, Bernadette Carstensen, Matthew Conner, Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs, James Janknegt, Timothy Jones, Michael D. O'Brien, and Elizabeth Zelasko.

This beautiful, hardcover cookbook features over 60 recipes to help your family celebrate the liturgical year and the life of the saints.

Both a teaching and a cookbook, this resource offers triple nourishment of body, soul and mind that makes it so much more than a trditional cookbook. From approachable saints bios with an accompanying dish to full meals associated with Holy Days of Obligation, your family will enjoy these delicious, authentic, tested, and easy-to-cook recipes.

Each delicious recipe comes from Alexandra Greeley, a professional world travel and advocate of all things relating to food and faith.

You and your family are sure to find Cooking with the Saints to be a wonderful companion to enrich your liturgical year.

An unsurpassable, visual tour of the greatest pilgrimage sites of Europe, from North to South; East to West.

Pilgrimage in Europe is currently thriving on a scale that simply could not have been envisaged just a few decades ago. Not only are greater numbers of people now emulating the medieval pilgrims who made their way on foot across Europe to the shrines of martyred apostles in Rome (SS Peter and Paul), Santiago de Compostela (St James) and Trondheim (St Olav), but international religious tourism is also thriving and millions each year are now travelling by air, rail and road to Europe's major pilgrimage churches and famous sites of Marian Apparition such as Lourdes (France) and Fatima (Portugal).

This book covers those key pilgrimage sites as well as many lesser known ones such as the Marian Sanctuary of La Salette in the French Alps, the cave sanctuary of Covadonga in Northern Spain, the majestic twenty-first-century basilica of Our Lady of Licheń in Poland and the Chapel of Grace in Altötting, Bavaria.

It comprises an atmospheric and colourful portrayal of the pilgrimage churches and cathedrals adorned with sculpture, art and iconography associated not only with the Virgin Mary but also the national saints and Early Christian martyrs revered by both Catholic and Anglican faiths alike. En route the reader will see some of the world's most impressive examples of medieval art and architecture set amidst historic townscapes or spectacular landscapes.

This volume will serve as both an enticement to take to the road, a treasured aide memoire for those who have visited at least some of these iconic places and hopefully, a source of comfort and inspiration for those unable to travel abroad from wherever they live in the world.

Home is where we are nurtured, where we live, and where we love. The language of Home is universal. It is where we find the eternal in the everyday.

But the Home has been neglected. To millions of women today, there is nothing worse than being a "homemaker." If only they knew the supreme value (and reward) of giving loved ones a place to call Home.

Written by two wives and mothers, Theology of Home is a simple guide to help reorient all of us toward our true home, allowing us to think purposefully about how to make our own homes on earth better equipped to get all those living in them to the Father's house. Featuring more than 100 beautiful (and inspiring) photographs from homes around the country, profound words from the saints and other literary figures, and in-depth commentary on the theological and spiritual underpinnings of our love for Home, Theology of Home offers readers a tour of both the Home and the human heart.

Whether you live in a sprawling estate or a humble dwelling, whether alone or with a crowd, this is far more than a book of beautiful photos and great décor ideas. You will also learn how to create a deeper sense of the divine through: