Wilfrid Sheed's books are a delight to read, but his reviews and essays are his true masterpieces.

Robert Giroux edited some of the 20th century's leading writers, including some prominent Catholic voices like Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy and Thomas Merton.

Graham Greene crafted some of English-language literature's finest works, part of a fascinating life marked by bouts of uncertainty and the certainty of doubt.

The death yesterday in a Russian penal colony of Alexei Navalny might naturally bring to mind the story of Walter Ciszek, S.J., the famed American Jesuit who spent 23 years in Soviet captivity.

Throughout a long career as a novelist, essayist, short story writer, poet and screenwriter, Ron Hansen has regularly explored questions of faith and religious belonging.

A Reflection for the Memorial of St. Scholastica, virgin, by James T. Keane

Langston Hughes, the great Black poet, playwright, journalist and author, had a nuanced and not easily categorized religious life.

After the publication of "Laudato Si'," rumors circulated that Pope Francis had personally asked Leonardo Boff for his input on the writing of the encyclical. It marked an ironic turn in the theologian's long career.

Is hell empty? Pope Francis hopes so. Among the thinkers of the past century who speculated it could be so was Hans Urs von Balthasar, a favorite of the past two popes and a prominent theologian of his time.

John W. Donohue, S.J., an associate editor of America from 1972 to 2007, was described by one Jesuit on staff as "a living rule. Were the Society of Jesus ever to lose its Constitutions, we would need only look to him to see how our life should be lived.”