Dear Pope Francis (Loyola Press)

Books "written" by the Pope always carry a special weight to them. After all, he is the leader of over one billion Catholics worldwide. I can think of a lot of Pope Benedict XVI books that have caused me to stop, ponder, and walk away spiritually enriched. Recently, Loyola Press released a book called Dear Pope Francis. This book is "co-authored" by Pope Francis and 30 children from around the world. Within this book, each child wrote a letter to Pope Francis, and he took the time to personally respond to each of them. Some of the questions are as follows:

How did Jesus walk on water?
What did God do before the world was made?
When you were a child did you like dancing?
Why didn't God defeat the devil?
Do bad people have guardian angels too?
My mum is in heaven. Will she grow angel wings?
What can I, as a child, do to increase the number of Christians in my age group?

As you can see, the questions have a wide range in both depth and seriousness. However, Pope Francis doesn't discount any question as beneath him or too silly to answer. Instead, he answers each question with a thoughtful and age-appropriate answer. What I like best about the book is that he doesn't talk down to the children, thinking they can't understand tougher concepts or hard truth. At the end of the book is the background on how this book came to exist, which was also a bit fascinating to read. Reading through this book will be a gift not only for your children, but you as well, because it contains questions that adults probably would want to ask but would never have the courage to themselves. I highly recommend this book to all families and Catholic religion teachers.

This book was provided to me for free by Loyola Press in exchange for an honest review.