Books to boost spirits and strengthen faith

Lavinia Byrne
10 July 2025, The Tablet

Our daily bread – the best of the year’s spiritual and theological books

We have produced a society and a culture in which it is impossible to say “I am unhappy”. Instead, we say we have “mental health issues”. We think we are ill when, really, we are sad. Enter the late Pope Francis’ final book, I Want You To Be Happy (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99; Tablet price £15.29). With chapters on happiness as a gift, a pathway, a revolutionary tool for bringing real love into being, it offers the perfect antidote to the world’s – and our personal – ills.

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