CTS Catholic Audiobooks
CTS Catholic Audiobooks is a free podcast from the Catholic Truth Society, a UK-based Catholic publishing charity, offering readings of classic and contemporary Catholic books. Each episode presents an audiobook in serialised form, covering subjects such as the lives of the saints, prayer, doctrine and devotion. The series makes the society's printed titles accessible to listeners who prefer to hear the text read aloud. Episodes are released through the CTS feed and are intended for personal listening, study and spiritual reflection.
Episodes
The Religion of the Day by Msgr James Shea (Full Audiobook)
We are living in a highly religious age. Secular gospels and dogmatic faiths promising salvation are all around us. So what is the belief system, the religious vision, that is displacing Christianity as the assumed narrative by which our post-Christian, modern societies live? And what is the religion that we ourselves need to be converted out of, if we are to be fully converted to the Christian fa
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From Christendom to Apostolic Mission by Msgr James Shea [Full Audiobook]
Every human society possesses a moral and spiritual imaginative vision, a set of assumptions and ways of looking at things according to which life proceeds. 'From Christendom to Apostolic Mission' is an attempt to contribute effective strategies to engage our own time and culture once more with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and – for a weary world – to awaken the Catholic imaginative vision.Monsignor
Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII (Audiobook)
When Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost became Pope in May 2025, he chose the name Leo XIV, echoing Pope Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum laid the foundation of Catholic Social Teaching.First published during the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, Rerum Novarum addressed the struggles of workers, the threats to family life, and the dangers of both unregulated capitalism and socialist
St Oscar Romero: Martyr for Faith (Audiobook)
Throughout history Christians have suffered martyrdom and torture as a result of ‘hatred of the faith’ (odium fidei). Archbishop Oscar Romero, gunned down while saying Mass, was declared to be such a martyr by Pope Francis, thus opening the way for his beatification and subsequent canonisation. Romero paid the ultimate price for his faithfulness to Christ and his Church, rather than is often misre
St Pier Giorgio Frassati: Patron of Catholic Youth (Audiobook)
A young man who spent his short life caring for the sick and infirm. A handsome and active young man from an influential family in Turin who dedicated his short life to the care of the poor and the sick and working for social and political reforms. Pier Giorgio Frassati's generosity was legendary. He often gave the clothes he was wearing to poor people he met who were in need. An open anti-fascist
The Inquisition: What Really Happened (Audiobook)
The Inquisition has become a byword for persecution and intolerance and is often given as a reason for distrusting the Catholic Church. Intending to separate fact from fiction, this helpful and informative audiobook explores what led to this most controversial chapter in the Church's history. What really happened during the time of the Inquisition? And what changes of perspective led to Pope John
St Josephine Bakhita - Survivor of Human Trafficking - Part 2 (Audiobook)
St Josephine Bakhita was a trafficked child: abducted from her home and family by slave raiders, sold and re-sold, and horribly abused. To a succession of cruel owners she was a thing, not a person, and even her name was taken from her. Yet her discovery of Jesus Christ, her true master, gave meaning to her appalling suffering.
Based on the Catholic Truth Society book by Jean Olwen Maynard, this
St Josephine Bakhita - Survivor of Human Trafficking - Part 1 (Audiobook)
St Josephine Bakhita was a trafficked child: abducted from her home and family by slave raiders, sold and re-sold, and horribly abused. To a succession of cruel owners she was a thing, not a person, and even her name was taken from her. Yet her discovery of Jesus Christ, her true master, gave meaning to her appalling suffering.
Based on the Catholic Truth Society book by Jean Olwen Maynard, thi
Bl Alvaro del Portillo (Audiobook)
The extraordinary life of a man who went from being a successful engineer to the priesthood and a ministry spent at the centre of some of the most momentous Church events of the twentieth century. He was present at Vatican II as a theological expert and on the death of St Josemaría Escrivá became the prelate of Opus Dei. This audiobook, based on the book published by the Catholic Truth Society, re
St Maria Goretti: Teenage Martyr (Audiobook)
In 1902 in an Italian village a young girl, Maria Goretti, was murdered during a sexual attack. Her killer, Alessandro Serenelli, himself a teenager, was a close neighbour well-known to her and her family. He had been threatening her for some time.
What does it mean, how can it help, to say that she is a virgin and martyr? This is an often misunderstood and sentimentalised story. When many parents
St Josemaria Escriva (Audiobook)
Born sixty years before the Second Vatican Council, St. Josemaria Escriva grew up in a politically volatile Spain, where the Church struggled to dialogue in a fast-changing world. This audiobook, based on the Catholic Truth Society booklet by Ethel Tolansky & Helena Scott, traces St. Josemaria Escriva’s journey from childhood and family tragedy, vocational struggle and civil war to the persona
Exorcism: According to a Real Exorcist (Audiobook)
Both secularism and superstition have popularised some very distorted ideas about exorcism. This audiobook, based on the booklet by an experienced exorcist, looks at its origin in the Gospels and its practice in the Church today. Different kinds of demonic influence are discussed, including their relation to conversion and sin and mental illness. Above all, this audiobook gives the good news that
St Edith Stein: Victim of the Nazis (Audiobook)
Edith Stein was a German Jewess who descended to the intellectual heights of atheism, was converted to Roman Catholicism and as a Discalced Carmelite nun ascended to Mount Carmel to the crystal peaks of mysticism. Her life on earth ended in the gas chambers of a Nazi concentration camp – which she entered unresisting as an oblation for her race. Spiritually a giant, in body she was small and frail
The Message of Bernadette: Lourdes & the Value of Suffering (Audiobook)
What is the point of suffering? Why would a good God allow it? The Christian response to these questions is one of the underlying messages from Our Lady's apparitions at Lourdes in 1858, not least through the life of Bernadette Soubirous, the seer of Lourdes, who endured so much suffering in her short life.
This audiobook, adapted from the classic text by Mgr Vernon Johnson which itself was up
St Charles de Foucauld: Soldier, Priest, Hermit (Audiobook)
In December 1916, deep in the Sahara, an unknown French hermit was shot through the head and dumped in a ditch. He was 58.
An accomplished geographer, linguist and explorer, in youth he had been a disillusioned soldier and aristocratic playboy.
Why at 30 did he abandon family, career, everything, to search for 'the last place', close to the poor and suffering?
This audiobook describes his epic pil
St Titus Brandsma: Victim of the Nazis (Audiobook)
St Titus Brandsma was a Dutch Carmelite who was killed for his heroic resistance to Nazi pressure on Catholic media outlets to betray their principles. A brilliant writer and philosopher as well as a man of great pastoral compassion to students, the elderly and novices alike – Fr Titus’s successful Catholic journalism put him on a collision course with the occupying forces in Holland.
In this fre
