Reviews
The Vatican Diaries Reviews
Booktopia: "Thavis’ work is a refreshing sign that great journalism is not dead."
Forbes: "Thavis’s Vatican Diaries is well worth putting on your Amazon wish list."
The Daily Beast: "A veritable handbook on all things Vatican now that the world is watching who the cardinal electors choose as a new pope."
The New York Review of Books: "The last few chapters ... are perhaps the strongest. He has an excellent chapter on 'Sex' and the Vatican as well as a quite moving final one on Benedict XVI. These chapters make fascinating reading."
USA Today: "Thavis answers all in this fascinating book."
New York Journal of Books: "A thoughtful meditation on recent papal administrations and the bureaucrats, functionaries, and emissaries who advance or thwart Rome’s global ambitions."
Commonweal: "Stories that will make you laugh or cry."
National Catholic Reporter: "Succeeds well in presenting the Roman Curia as a flesh-and-blood community, a byzantine theater of the sacred."
The Anchoress: "A thumping good read... grabbed me at the intro and held my attention for six solid hours, to the finish."
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The New Yorker: "Most fascinating is Thavis' generous assessment of Benedict XVI, whom he sees as an almost tragic figure."
Kirkus Reviews: "Not only provocative, this report is illuminating and fully accessible to members of the faith and doubters alike."
Publishers Weekly: "Entertaining and readable ... Thavis reveals a great deal about how the Vatican bumbles along."
The Eagle-Tribune: "A lively book that's steeped in history and personality."
Eastern Christian Books: "Perceptive, sharply written and witty."
Book-Nook Blog: "Fascinating."
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Catholic Hot Dish: "Informative and entertaining... it gives us valuable insight into the organizational challenges the new pontiff faces."
The Vatican Prophecies Reviews
Time Magazine: “In his behind-the-scenes look at how the Vatican investigates supernatural signs, Thavis highlights the steps it has taken to reassert its authority.”
Tribune News Service: “Veteran Catholic journalist John Thavis explores the world of Marian apparitions, relics, exorcisms, doomsday visions and other purported encounters with the supernatural.”
Catholic News Service: “What makes this book a page-turner that many will find difficult to put down are its countless stories about the work, convictions and religious experiences of real people.”
Kirkus Reviews: “A lively, far-reaching exploration of the paranormal aspects of the Catholic faith.”
National Catholic Register: “His detailed analysis of the history and current investigations of the Marian apparitions at Medjugorje is both succinct and fair-minded. His chapter on the debate over the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin is riveting. And his exploration of modern miracles proves to be a pilgrimage in itself.”
Boston Globe: The book aims to “explore the sometimes uneasy fact of the church of miracles coexisting with the church of reason.”