The Sign of the Cross (book)

For other uses, see Sign of the Cross (disambiguation).

The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe is a non-fiction book published in 1994 by Irish writer Colm Tóibín.

In the book, Tóibín describes successive Holy Weeks spent in Poland, Seville, Bavaria, Rome, and the Balkans and reflects on the condition of Catholicism in every place making it an intellectual survey of the state of the faith in the new Europe of the 1990s. He also visits post-Communist Catholic Lithuania and Estonia and considers the faith in Ireland and Scotland.

Tóibín, a Catholic by baptism, reckons with the religious demons of his past, the rituals, the pilgrimages, and the shrines. A special chapter is devoted to Toibin's strange and painful session in group therapy, wherein, to his surprise, he experiences the urge to make the sign of the cross in memory of his father, who died when he was a boy. His father's death is also present in some of his novels.

The book was shortlisted for the Waterstone's / Volvo / Esquire Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 1994.

Works by Colm Tóibín

Novels	The South (1990) The Heather Blazing (1992) The Story of the Night (1996) The Blackwater Lightship (1999) The Master (2004) Brooklyn (2009) The Testament of Mary (2012) Nora Webster (2014)

Essay collections	Love in a Dark Time (2002) New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers & Their Families (2012)

Short story collections	Mothers and Sons (2006) The Empty Family (2010)

Plays	Beauty in a Broken Place (2004)

Poetry	Cush Gap, 2007 (2011)

Non-fiction	Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border (1987) Homage to Barcelona (1990) The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994) Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (2002) The Use of Reason (2006)

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