Each of these three new books on the papacy is informative and interesting. “The Pope: Francis, Benedict, and the Decision That Shook the World” is by the author of the screenplay for a dramatic film with the same title being produced by Netflix. The co-authors of “The Papacy: What the Pope Does and Why It Matters” are a former Baptist who became a Catholic and a literature professor and deacon who spent eight years in a Catholic seminary. Gerard O’Connell, author of “The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Account of the Conclave that Changed History,” is an associate editor and Vatican correspondent for the Jesuit weekly magazine, America, as well as a reporter on the Vatican for various other English-speaking Catholic news outlets.

An El Salvadoran countryside, a Canadian mosque, a carpenter’s workshop on the small Italian island of Lampedusa and a family home in Minnesota serve as the setting of Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation’s latest documentary, The Francis Impact.

A genuine crisis – not a self-invented melodrama, but an honest-to-God existential threat – is a funny thing, in that often it produces wildly contrasting effects in people. Among some it can generate burning anger and resentment, in others confusion and despair, and in still others only shrugs and ennui.