Many publishers feature titles viewing today's toughest issues through a religious lens. At Orbis, the publishing arm of the Catholic Maryknoll Society, addressing justice and peace is the primary mission. PW asked Robert Ellsberg, Orbis publisher and editor-in-chief, about their focus on books for challenging times.
How do you keep up with today’s political and social turmoil?
We don’t worry about the pace. Whatever you’re responding to today will be surpassed by something else tomorrow. Orbis means “world” in Latin. We were founded in 1970 to amplify voices of liberation theology from the third world. And we have expanded from there to offer a spiritual, religious, theological, ethical kind of response to what is happening in our country in relation to the world. We’re dealing with immigration, anti-racism, the environment, care for the poor and marginalized—perennial issues.
How does Orbis approach that?
We know readers have concern for the world and they want to engage in ways that are spiritually and morally healthy. Facing these perennial issues, they are asking themselves, How do I hold on to my humanity? How do I not get ground down? How do I sustain myself for the long haul because things won’t be solved in a few months or years?
How are readers responding to these books?
We know social justice doesn’t sell like books on dreams or angels or romance or crime, but we see a hunger for books that affirm that higher standard of greatness that Pope Francis has written about. It’s a vision informed by mercy and solidarity.
What did Pope Francis have to say about Orbis?
On our 50th anniversary, he sent us a fantastic letter with this great line where he said there is a demand today to cultivate, especially in the younger generation, an imagination that would help them believe that another way of writing history is possible.
