If there was one thing the Peruvian-Barcelona writer Santiago Roncagliolo (Lima, 1975) was clear about when, a few years ago, he began researching for the book El pastor y los lobos – which Seix Barral has just published – it was that the American priest Robert Francis Prevost did not go to the Peruvian town of Chulucanas in 1985 “to prosper, nor to be important within the Church, nor to live well.” The author of this very personal biography about the Pope, in which echoes of Carrère and Cercas resonate, intersperses painful episodes from his own life – such as the abuse he suffered from a priest at his school – others from the life of Saint Augustine, investigates the meaning of faith in today’s world, and makes revelations about Prevost’s relentless fight against mafias and abusers, even bringing to light some secrets of the conclave that chose Leo XIV as Francis’s successor.

The Film Academy announced this Thursday the three Spanish films that begin the race towards the Oscar. Los domingos, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa; El ser querido, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen; and La bola negra, by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, are the three preselected films for the major film awards given in Hollywood. Pedro Almodóvar, who released Amarga Navidad this year, has been left out.