Sting and Religion: The Catholic-Shaped Imagination of a Rock Icon. By Evyatar Marienberg. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2021. ix + 215 pp. $29.00 paper

Taken during a recording session at Montserrat the day of his mother's death and used as the back cover of his album Nothing Like the Sun, the photograph shows him standing next to a statue of the Virgin Mary, her hands clasped in prayer. Sumner was just seventeen, finishing grammar school, when Pope Paul VI released the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which prohibited all methods of contraception except for the “rhythm method.” The decade also witnessed stirrings of the ecumenical impulse that slowly lowered the barriers between the Church of England and Catholics.