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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies.

We in the media regularly cover the decisions of powerful leaders in government and business and how they affect our lives.

My guest today, veteran investigative reporter Philip Sheenan, has spent much of the last 10 years examining the impact of seven powerful men who've exercised a different kind of authority.

They're the last seven popes of the Catholic Church,

whose intense power struggles and doctrinal debates

affect more than a billion Catholics in countless ways,

whether they can use birth control or get an abortion or divorce

and remain in good standing in the faith,

whether priests must forever remain unmarried and celibate, a rule with little biblical authority

that fuels a drastic shortage of priests and leaves millions unable to regularly attend mass or

receive sacraments, whether same-sex couples can be accepted in the church, and whether sexual

predators will be stopped and held accountable. Sheenan's book is the story of a bold attempt

to reform the church in the early 1960s, and decades of backsliding that followed, under

pontiffs more comfortable with conservative traditions and power concentrated in the Vatican.

Philip Sheenan spent more than 20 years at the New York Times, covering the Pentagon,

the Justice Department, the State Department, and Congress.

His two previous books focused on the 9-11 investigation and unanswered questions about the Kennedy assassination.

His new book is Jesus Wept, Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church.

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