Catholic bookshops

Earlier today I got in a conversation about Catholic bookshops and religious good stores. This is an interesting topic, I feel, and one of concern since many such shops are struggling to survive at a time when most people can buy what they are looking for online.

Now, I have to say that I am fortunate enough that there is a fantastic bookstore right on the campus of the Salesian Pontifical University where I teach in Rome. That shop is part of a family-run chain that goes back to the days of Leo XIII. But the Leoniana is struggling too, even though the store is usually filled with clients: students, professors, neighbors, leaders from nearby parishes. I go there principally for the books, but there are also religious goods there, and stationery. What has been said about "location, location, location" is certainly at work here, and also quite vital since our campus is quite far from the city center.

At least once a month I travel to the old center of the city to shops run by the Daughters of St Paul or the Salesians to look for and pick up books (catechetics, spirituality, pastoral care); at other times I travel to Borgo Pio to shop at Soprani or Comandini for religious goods (usually when I am looking for gifts). I need to take at least two buses to reach these places, and so I am intentional about these trips.

As others have mentioned, there were more Catholic bookstores and religious goods shops in the past. When I grew up in the 1960s, there were two within the radius of 3 miles of where we lived in southern California, and our parish had a "religious goods and Catholic book shop" open on Sundays in the parish hall from 7:30 AM to 1:30 PM. I suspect the two local shops made that possible for our parish. Nowadays there is a gentleman who sets up a stall and sells religious goods and catechetical books (all in Spanish) just in the passage way between the church and the hall in that same home-town parish where I grew up. Whenever I am in town I notice that that stall is surrounded by people coming out of mass. This seems to me to be more of a service and an apostolate than a business, but it also shows me that parishioners make use of this service.