What we learned this week

PEN America have just run Banned Books Week, highlighting the wave of censorship and paranoia in America’s schools and libraries. Take a look. Opposing book bans is about the freedom to think for yourself, to encounter new ideas. Book bans are a tool of totalitarianism.

Pope Francis has published a new encyclical, the first that is specifically about climate change. “Eight years have passed since I published the Encyclical Letter Laudato si’,” he writes. “With the passage of time, I have rea...