About this library

catholicpubs.com is a free library of Catholic Church documents distributed as EPUB files. It exists because these texts are among the most widely cited and least comfortably read documents in the world: they are almost all available somewhere on the web as long single pages, and almost none of them are available in a form you can read on an e-reader, annotate, or keep.

What is here

Documents issued by popes, ecumenical councils, and the departments of the Roman Curia, together with works of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Each document is catalogued by its issuing authority, its type, its date, and its subject, and each is offered as one or more editions — a particular text, in a particular language, from a particular source.

Editions, not just works

The distinction matters more than it sounds. A work is the document itself; an edition is one concrete text of it. Augustine's Confessions is a work; a specific English translation of it is an edition. Copyright attaches to editions, not works, so the library tracks them separately and states the rights position of each edition on its own.

These are unofficial editions

Nothing here is an official publication of the Holy See or of any other authority. These are e-reader editions prepared from published texts, and where an official source exists online the document page links to it. For anything where precision matters — citation, study, argument — check the official text.

Support

The library is free and always will be, with no account, no advertising and no email capture. If you would like to help with running costs, there is a donation link on the contact page. It is not in the download path and it never will be.