Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon is an appropriately named investigative novel that delves into the lives of the previous six or seven popes and how their winning the conclave election to become supreme rulers of the Roman Catholic Church have created an uproar, for better or worse, throughout the entire world. Specifically, it also covers one of the most embarrassing cover-ups that have plagued the church for decades: child molestation and abuse. Writing anything religious will surely anger a lot of people, and in this case, I’m sure a lot of people who have real political influence. But the author sticks with it, as evidenced by almost half of this 600-page book being dedicated to just his bibliography and notes alone in the digital version. Jesus Wept provides readers with an easy-to-read and follow starter guide to the church’s previous 100 years. This book is anything but boring.

The book starts out with Pope Pius XII and ends with Pope Francis. After the book was published in February of 2025, Pope Francis passed away two months later. The book really starts to get interesting during Pope John XXIII’s tenure, from 1958 to 1963. His calling for the Vatican II council stirred up a lot of drama, and his call for the church to be more “merciful” still had a profound effect during Pope Francis’s tenure many decades later. Similar to the political landscape of today, we learn about how the church has progressive popes, bishops, and cardinals who want to change the image of the church to be more lenient on their parishioners, as opposed to the conservatives, who want things to remain the same as they always have been and, at times, to be even more strict than ever. It is this battle that Jesus Wept helps us gain an image of how, through the many years and decades, popes and other members of the powerful Curia jostle for power to shape the lives of millions and millions of followers throughout the world.

Reading Jesus Wept can be downright infuriating at times, but this is something I told myself to expect from the beginning. The hypocrisy the author highlights with the high-ranking bishops and cardinals is downright criminal at times. Most infuriating is how so much time and research have been poured into this book, showing how so many high-ranking churchmen, including the pope, have gone through so much effort to protect child abusers while pretending not to know about it when called out on it by journalists and their own parishioners. The fact that such a huge scandal, on a global scale, cannot tear down the church is evidence of how powerful it is both in public and behind the scenes. However maddening the events were portrayed here, Jesus Wept is still a highly entertaining and eye-opening read. Getting introduced to the many movers and shakers of Vatican City, past and present, goes to show that one does not necessarily have to be the pope in order to make a change in the world where Catholicism is concerned.