Rather like a crowd in St. Peter’s Square awaiting the Pope, publishers are multiplying reading choices for those who want to know about newly elected Pope Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires. The Spanish-language edition of Francis, Man of Prayer by Mario Escobar will ship April 10 from Grupo Nelson, the Spanish-language imprint of Thomas Nelson; an English-Language edition will ship April 17 from Nelson’s W Publishing imprint. Escobar has written about Catholic and Protestant religious history. No first printing number was available.
In the meantime, Image, which was first out of the gate last week with its book, said Tuesday it would release on May 7 the first English-language edition of Between Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family and the Church in the 21st Century, a book co-written by the pope himself and Abraham Skorka, rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Skorka and Bergoglio developed the book out of conversations the two had. Maya Mavjee, president and publisher of the Crown Publishing Group, acquired North American, world English, audio, electronic, first serial, and large print rights from Núria Cabutí, CEO of Random House Mondadori. The book was originally published in Spanish in 2010 in Latin America and Spain. Mavjee said in a statement the book had global appeal because of its interreligious context.
