The writers listed on this page should be limited to those who identify as Catholic in some way. This does not mean they are necessarily orthodox in their beliefs. It does mean they identify as Catholic in a religious, cultural, or even aesthetic manner. The common denominator is that at least some (and preferably the majority) of their writing is imbued with a Catholic religious, cultural or aesthetic sensibility.
Asian languages
Chinese language
Xu Guangqi – one of the Three Pillars of Chinese Catholicism. He was a Chinese scholar-bureaucrat, agronomist, astronomer, mathematician, and writer during the Ming dynasty. Xu was a colleague and collaborator of the Italian Jesuits Matteo Ricci and Sabatino de Ursis and assisted their translation of several classic Western texts into Chinese, including part of Euclid's Elements.
Su Xuelin – Chinese educator, essayist, novelist and poet; she described Thorny Heart as a description of her 'personal journey on the road to Catholicism'[1]
John Ching Hsiung Wu – jurist and author; wrote in Chinese, English, French, and German on Christian spirituality, Chinese literature and legal topics
Li Yingshi – Ming Chinese military officer and a renowned mathematician,[1] astrologer and feng shui expert, who was among the first Chinese literati to become Christian. Converted to Catholicism by Matteo Ricci and Diego de Pantoja, the first two Jesuits to establish themselves in Beijing.
Gjon Buzuku – priest; wrote the first known printed book in Albanian.
Pal Engjëlli – Archbishop; wrote the first known document in Albanian
Gjergj Fishta – poet; in 1937 he completed and published his epic masterpiece Lahuta e Malcís, an epic poem written in the Gheg dialect of Albanian. It contains 17,000 lines and is considered the "Albanian Iliad". He is regarded among the most influential cultural and literary figures of the 20th century in Albania.
Ndre Mjeda – Jesuit poet; poems include "The Nightingale's Lament" and "Imitation of the Holy Virgin"
Giulio Variboba – poet; priest, of the Arbëresh Albanian people of Southern Italy, regarded by many Albanians as the first genuine poet in all of Albanian literature
Pjetër Budi – Bishop; known for his work "Doktrina e Kërshtenë" (The Christian Doctrine), an Albanian translation of the catechism of Robert Bellarmine.
Bosnian language
Matija Divković – Bosnian Franciscan and writer from Bosnia; considered to be the founder of the modern literature in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatian language
Ivan Gundulić – poet; work embodies central characteristics of Catholic Counter-Reformation
Petar Preradović – was a Croatian poet, writer, and military general of Serb origin. He was one of the most important Croatian poets of the 19th century Illyrian movement and the main representative of romanticism in Croatia.
Mihalj Šilobod Bolšić – Roman Catholic priest, mathematician, writer, and musical theorist primarily known for writing the first Croatian arithmetic textbook Arithmatika Horvatzka (published in Zagreb, 1758).
Czech language
Jindřich Šimon Baar – ordained as a Catholic priest in 1892; wrote about church reform
Jakub Deml – between 1902 and 1909 he was a Catholic priest; suspended in 1912; publishing of his books was prohibited after the communist coup
Ivan Diviš – converted to Catholicism in 1964 (during their Communist period); he left after the Prague Spring ended
Jaroslav Durych – originally a physician; essayist and poet; wrote the novel Bloudění (from the Thirty Years' War), which was translated into several languages, including English
Tomáš Halík – priest and writer; priest in the underground church during Communism
Jan Lipšanský – contemporary Czech writer of Catholic essays (some of them broadcast by Vatican Radio) and some mystery stories with a modern monk solving them
Jan Zahradníček – Catholic mystic poet of the early and mid-20th century; because of his writings he was imprisoned as an enemy of the Communists after their coup in 1948
Danish language
Jens Johannes Jørgensen – late-19th and early-20th-century poet and novelist; also a biographer of Catholic saints
Dutch language
Bertus Aafjes (born Lambertus Jacobus Johannes Aafjes) – 20th-century poet; poems such as "Een Voetreis naar Rome" (1946) and "In den Beginne" (1949) show a strong Catholic faith
Joost van den Vondel – dramatist and poet of the Dutch Golden Age; converted to Catholicism from a Mennonite background around 1641; his masterpieces are his dramas on religious and biblical themes, e.g., Lucifer, Noah and his short poems
English language
As the anti-Catholic laws were lifted in the mid-19th century, there was a revival of Catholicism in the British Empire. There has long been a distinct Catholic strain in English literature.
The most notable figures are Cardinal Newman, a convert, one of the leading prose writers of his time and also a substantial poet, and the priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, also a convert, although most of the latter's works were only published many years after his death. In the early 20th century, G. K. Chesterton, a convert, and Hilaire Belloc, a French-born Catholic who became a British subject, promoted Roman Catholic views in direct apologetics as well as in popular, lighter genres, such as Chesterton's "Father Brown" detective stories. From the 1930s on the "Catholic novel" became a force impossible to ignore, with leading novelists of the day, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, converts both, dealing with distinctively Catholic themes in their work. Although James Hanley was not a practising Catholic, a number of his novels emphasise Catholic beliefs and values, including The Furys Chronicle.
In America, Flannery O'Connor wrote powerful short stories with a Catholic sensibility and focus, set in the American South where she was decidedly in the religious minority.
A–C
Lord Acton – 19th-century English historian from a Catholic Recusant family; disagreed with ultramontanism and had Old Catholic Church sympathies, but never left the church; known for the aphorism that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
Maurice Baring – English man of letters, convert, friend of Belloc and Chesterton
James K Baxter (1926–1972) – New Zealand poet, dramatist, literary critic and social commentator; a convert to Catholicism[2]
Hilaire Belloc – strongly held, orthodox Catholic views; wrote apologetics, famous comic verse, historical, political and economic works and well-known account of a pilgrimage he took on foot, "The Path to Rome"; French-born but became a British subject and politician
G. K. Chesterton – English convert, wrote apologetics including Orthodoxy as well as novels, including The Man Who Was Thursday, poetry, biographies and literary studies, and lighter works including the "Father Brown" detective stories
Christopher Dawson – British historian and convert; proposed that the medieval Catholic Church was an essential factor in the rise of European civilisation
Princess Der Ling – Chinese-American writer of several memoirs, books, and magazine articles
Annie Dillard – American writer of fiction and narrative non-fiction. While her website notes that she espouses no religion, her books deal deeply with theology and Catholic liturgy (especially Holy the Firm and Teaching a Stone to Talk)
E. J. Dionne – American journalist and political commentator; noted for coverage of Vatican City
Ernest Dowson – English decadent poet; converted to Catholicism
John Dryden – poet of Restoration England; converted to Catholicism in his fifties; his long poem The Hind and the Panther (1687) explains the reasons for his conversion to the Church from Anglicanism
John Martin Finlay – American poet and writer, converted to Catholicism a year before his death in 1991
Mitch Finley – contemporary American writer of more than 30 nonfiction books on Catholic topics
F. Scott Fitzgerald – American author, raised Catholic, married in a Catholic church, and categorised as Catholic, though he was not a practicing one for most of his life
Lady Antonia Fraser – English author, Roman Catholic (converted with her parents as a child); caused a public scandal in 1977 by leaving her Catholic husband for Harold Pinter
Brian Friel – Irish dramatist, some pre-Christian Celtic elements are in his writing too though
Maggie Gallagher – American socially conservative writer and commentator; has campaigned against abortion and gay marriage
Henri Nouwen – Dutch Catholic priest; left academic post to work with the mentally challenged at the L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada
Michael Novak – contemporary politically conservative American political writer
Alfred Noyes – English poet; known for "The Highwayman"; wrote about his conversion to Catholicism in The Unknown God (1934)
Kate O'Beirne – wrote syndicated columns for the National Review and other conservative publications; also wrote books
Flannery O'Connor – her writing was deeply informed by the sacramental, and the Thomist notion that the created world is charged with God; like Graham Greene and Francois Mauriac she often focused on sin and human evil
Joseph Pearce – English literary scholar and critic; former British National Front member who renounced racism on conversion; edited the anthology Flowers of Heaven: 1000 Years of Christian Verse; biographer of Oscar Wilde and Hilaire Belloc
Walker Percy – Southern American convert and novelist who helped create the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He was also the man who discovered and helped publish the work of the deceased John Kennedy Toole. His most well-known novel, The Moviegoer, won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1962.
David Pietrusza – American historian, editor of "Sursum Corda: Documents and Readings on the Traditional Latin Mass"
Piers Paul Read – contemporary but orthodox Catholic British novelist; vice president of the Catholic Writers Guild
Anne Rice – American writer; after a long separation from her Catholic faith during which she described herself as atheist, she returned to the church in 1998 and pledged to use her talents to glorify God; in 2010, she recanted her faith, declaring that she was going to follow Christ without Christianity, out of solidarity for her gay son
David Adams Richards – award-winning Canadian novelist, essayist and screenwriter; from New Brunswick
Kevin Rush – American lay Catholic, playwright of award-winning stage play, Crossing Event Horizon, about a Catholic high school guidance counselor's midlife crisis, and novelist, author of Earthquake Weather, a novel for Catholic teens, and The Lance and the Veil, an adventure in the time of Christ.
George Santayana – Spanish-American philosopher and novelist; baptised Catholic; despite taking a sceptical stance in his philosophy to belief in the existence of God, he identified himself with Catholic culture, referring to himself as an "aesthetic Catholic"
Steven Schloeder – American architect and theologian; wrote book Architecture in Communion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998)
William Shakespeare – regarded by most to be the greatest playwright and poet in the English language, as well as being one of the greatest writers in the world; although disputed, a growing number of biographers and critics hold that his religion was Catholic
Patrick Augustine Sheehan – Canon Sheehan of Doneraile, Catholic priest, novelist essayist and poet; significant figure of the renouveau Catholique in English literature in the United States and in Europe
Robert Smith – American Catholic priest, author and educator
Joseph Sobran – wrote for The Wanderer, an orthodox Roman Catholic journal
St. Robert Southwell – 16th-century Jesuit; martyred during the persecutions of Elizabeth I; wrote religious poetry, i.e., "The Burning Babe", and Catholic tracts
Dame Muriel Spark – Scottish novelist; decided to join the Roman Catholic Church in 1954 and considered it crucial in her becoming a novelist in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene; novels often focus on human evil and sin
Robert Spencer – writer and commentator on Islam and jihad
Karl Stern – German-Jewish convert and psychiatrist
Francis Stuart – Australian-born Irish-nationalist Catholic convert; son-in-law of Maud Gonne; accused of anti-Semitism in his later years by Maire McEntee O'Brien and Kevin Myers
Jon M. Sweeney – American author of many books on religion, popular history, and memoir; convert
Susie Forrest Swift (later, Sister M. Imelda Teresa, 1862–1916), American Dominican nun, magazine editor, writer
Harry Sylvester – American journalist, short story writer, and novelist; most famous books were the Catholic novels Dayspring and Moon Gaffney
Ellen Tarry – writer of young-adult literature and The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman
Christopher Villiers – British Catholic theologian and poet; author of Sonnets From the Spirit.
Maurice Walsh – one of the most popular Irish writers of the 1930s and 1940s, now chiefly remembered for the Hollywood film of his short story 'The Quiet Man;' wrote for the Irish Catholic magazine the Capuchin Annual and listed in the 1948 publication 'Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches, 1930–1952, Volume 1;'
Evelyn Waugh – novelist; converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930; his religious ideas are manifest, either explicitly or implicitly, in all of his later work; strongly orthodox and conservative Roman Catholic
Morris West – Australian writer; several of his novels are set in the Vatican
Antonia White – author of four novels – including her 1933 novel Frost in May, based on her experiences at her Catholic boarding school – two children's books, and a short story collection.
Oscar Wilde – late-19th-century playwright and poet; fascinated by Catholicism as a young man and much of his early poetry shows this heavy influence; embraced a homosexual lifestyle later on, but converted to Catholicism on his deathbed (receiving a conditional baptism as there is some evidence, including his own vague recollection, that his mother had him baptised in the Catholic Church as a child[8][9])
Honoré de Balzac – 19th-century novelist; wrote in a preface to La Comédie Humaine that "Christianity, and especially Catholicism, being a complete repression of man's depraved tendencies, is the greatest element in Social Order"
Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly – 19th-century novelist and short story writer, who specialised in mysterious tales that examine hidden motivation and hinted evil bordering the supernatural
Charles Baudelaire – 19th-century decadent poet; long debate as to what extent Baudelaire was a believing Catholic; work is dominated by an obsession with the Devil and original sin, and often utilises Catholic imagery and theology
Georges Bernanos – novelist, a devout Catholic; novels include The Diary of a Country Priest
Leon Bloy – late-19th- and early-20th-century novelist
The Vicomte de Chateaubriand – founder of Romanticism in French literature; returned to the Catholic faith of his 1790s boyhood; wrote apologetic for Christianity, "Génie du christianisme" ("The Genius of Christianity"), which contributed to a post-Revolutionary revival of Catholicism in France
Paul Claudel – devout Catholic poet; a leading figure in French poetry of the early 20th century; author of verse dramas focusing on religious themes
René Descartes – one of the most famous philosophers in the world; dubbed the father of modern philosophy; much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day; also a mathematician and a scientist.
Saint Francis de Sales – Bishop of Geneva from 1602 to 1622; a Doctor of the Church; wrote classic devotional works, e.g., Introduction à la vie dévote (Introduction to the Devout Life) and Traité de l' Amour de Dieu (Treatise on the Love of God); Pope Pius XI proclaimed him patron saint of writers and journalists
François Fénelon – late-17th- and early-18th-century writer and archbishop; some of his writings were condemned as Quietist by Pope Innocent XII; he obediently submitted to the judgment of the Holy See
Henri Ghéon – French poet and critic; his experiences as an army doctor during the First World War saw him regain his Catholic faith (as described in his work "L'homme né de la guerre", "The Man Born Out of the War"); from then on much of his work portrays episodes from the lives of the saints
René Girard – historian, literary critic and philosopher
Julien Green – novelist and diarist; convert from Protestantism; A devout Catholic, most of his books focused on the ideas of faith and religion as well as hypocrisy.
Hergé – nom de plume of the writer and illustrator of Tintin, one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, answer to Le Petit Vingtième request for a Catholic reporter that fought evil around the world
Joris-Karl Huysmans – originally a decadent novelist, his later novels, En Route (1895), La Cathédrale (1898) and L'Oblat (1903), trace his conversion to Roman Catholicism
Henri de Lubac – priest (later cardinal) and leading theologian
Joseph de Maistre – late-18th- and early-19th-century writer and philosopher from Savoy, one of the most influential intellectual opponents of the French Revolution and a firm defender of the authority of the Papacy
Saint Louis de Montfort – priest; wrote The True Devotion to Mary; Catholic saint
Malika Oufkir – Moroccan writer imprisoned with her mother and siblings in a secret Saharan prison for 15 years; these years are recounted in her autobiography, La Prisonniere, later translated into English as Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
Blaise Pascal – polymath (physicist, mathematician and philosopher); made significant contributions to various fields including probability and mathematics; wrote Pensées
Charles Péguy – poet; long poems include "Mysteres de Charité de Jeanne d'Arc" ("Mysteries of the Charity of Joan of Arc") and "Le mystère des saints innocents" ("The Mystery of the Holy Innocents")
Arthur Rimbaud – 19th-century poet and confessional writing pioneer; author of A Season in Hell; self-professed "voyant", or seer
Saint Therese of Lisieux – 19th-century Carmelite nun and now a Doctor of the Church; autobiography, L'histoire d'un âme (The Story of a Soul), was a best-seller and remains a spiritual classic
Clemens Brentano – German poet and novelist of Italian origins; leading figure in the Romantic movement; later withdrew to a monastery and acted as secretary to the visionary nun Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich
Dietrich von Hildebrand – philosopher and theologian (wrote in both German and English); convert
Hugo von Hofmannsthal – late-19th- and early-20th-century Austrian poet and playwright; later plays revealed a growing interest in religious, and particularly Roman Catholic, themes
Angelus Silesius – 17th-century convert to Catholicism from Lutheranism; became a priest and wrote religious poems, some of which became famous as hymns in the German-speaking world; some of his poetry seems to lean towards pantheism or quietism, but his prose works were orthodox, and the Catholic Encyclopedia says he repudiated any unorthodox interpretation of those poems
Blessed Henry Suso – 14th-century Dominican friar; devotional writer of the Middle Ages, including "the Minnesinger of Divine Love" in works such as his Little Book of Eternal Wisdom; his works contributed to the formation of German prose
Patrick Pearse (also known as Pádraic or Pádraig Pearse) – Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist; one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916; educated by the Christian Brothers; established St. Enda's School; also wrote in English
Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin (1780–1838) – Irish language author and one-time hedge school master; is also known as Humphrey O'Sullivan. Was deeply involved in Daniel O'Connell's Catholic Emancipation movement and in relief work among the poor of County Kilkenny. His diary, published later as Cín Lae Amhlaoibh, was kept between 1827 and 1835. "His personal charisma allowed him to cross social and religious barriers, and he used this affability to collect signatures in support of Catholic Emancipation – even getting non-Catholic friends to add their names to 'The Protestant Declaration in favour of Catholic Emancipation'."[12]
Dante Alighieri (simply called Dante) – his Divine Comedy is often considered the greatest Christian poem; Pope Benedict XV praised him in an encyclical, writing that of all Catholic literary geniuses "highest stands the name of Dante"[13]
Giovannino Guareschi – wrote the "Don Camillo" series of stories about a village priest and his rivalry with the Communist mayor
Alessandro Manzoni – wrote the novel I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) which reflects his Catholic faith; in his youth "he imbibed the anti-Catholic creed of Voltairianism", but after his marriage, under the influence of his wife, he "exchanged it for a fervent Catholicism"
Pope Pius II – in his younger days he had been a poet laureate and had written an erotic novel, Eurialus and Lucretia; later he wrote histories and epistles
Saint Ambrose – Bishop of Milan; one of the Four Latin Church Fathers; notable for his influence on Augustine; promoter of antiphonal chant and for the Ambrosian Rite
Augustine of Hippo – earliest theologian and philosopher of the Church still having wide influence today; Bishop of Hippo; one of the Four Church Fathers; known for his apologetic work Confessions
Pope Gregory I – Pope; one of the Four Latin Church Fathers; born to a patrician family in Rome and became a monk; known today as being the first monk to become Pope and for traditionally being credited with Gregorian chant; emphasized charity in Rome
Saint Jerome – one of the Four Latin Church Fathers; known for translating the Bible into Latin; this translation is known as the Vulgate and became the founding source for Biblical subjects in the West
Anthony Boucher – American science-fiction editor, mystery novelist and short- story writer; his science-fiction short story "The Quest for Saint Aquin" shows his strong commitment to the religion
G. K. Chesterton – English lay theologian, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, literary and art critic, biographer, and Christian apologist; wrote several books of short stories about a priest, Father Brown, who acts as a detective
Antonia Fraser – English writer of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction; Roman Catholic (converted with her parents as a child); caused a public scandal in 1977 by leaving her Catholic husband for Harold Pinter
Ronald Knox – English priest and theologian; wrote six mystery novels
Ralph McInerny – American novelist; wrote over thirty books, including the Father Dowling mystery series; taught for over forty years at the University of Notre Dame, where he was the director of the Jacques Maritain Center
Walter M. Miller, Jr. – American science-fiction novelist and short-story writer; convert, then ex-Catholic; known for the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) and other Catholic-themed works
Michael D. O'Brien – Canadian Catholic novelist; works include the "Father Elijah" series[25]
Tim Powers – American science-fiction and fantasy novelist; self-avowed Catholic in interviews[26][27]
Fred Saberhagen – American science-fiction and fantasy novelist and short-story writer[28]
Eric Rohmer – French New Wave director and screenwriter and editor of Cahiers du Cinéma. His filmography shows an interest in Catholicism, and he personally attended Holy Mass every week.[33]
^Prado-Garduño, Gloria. Creación, recepción y efecto: Una aproximación hermenéutica a la obra literaria (in Spanish) (Second edition-First electronic ed.). México: Universidad Panamericana A.C. 2014. p. 203. ISBN978-607-417-264-5.
^LaGreca, Nancy. Rewriting womanhood: feminism, subjectivity, and the angel of the house in the Latin American novel, 1887–1903. United States of America: Penn State Press. 2009. p. 202. ISBN978-0-271-03439-3.
