National Spotlight on Catholic Bookstore Building Community in Digital Age

Why would anyone go to a bookstore when you can buy any book you want with a click a button?

Because people need other people, says Dr. Mark Zia, a theologian at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

The National Catholic Register spotlighted Bookstores Catholics Should Know About nationwide, and led with Pace e Bene, the store Zia’s family founded just three years ago in Atchison.

Zia summed up Pace e Bene’s mission as “a theology of encounter.” The key is to see people as people, not as business transactions, he says.

The experiment is working. Benedictine College’s mission is to build community, faith and scholarship and all three are central to the bookstore’s appeal, also. Pace e Bene does this by providing not just books, but a place to sit and enjoy baked goods, Italian coffee and gelato served by the Zia family.

“We want our store to be a place of peace and goodness — hence the store name, ‘Pace e Bene’ — so all who enter feel welcome,” Zia told the Register. “Our world tends to be too focused on ‘digital this’ and ‘virtual that,’ so we seek to preserve the meaning of true encounters with others, focusing on them and their stories, and not on mere business transactions.”

The bookstore was recently featured in Benedictine College’s student newspaper as a favorite study spot — and the store is usually crowded with students.

The Atchison Chamber of Commerce and the Facebook page Downtown Atchison have featured the store — but otherwise you can’t find them online.

“We intentionally do not have an online presence nor a monitored website,” Zia told the Register. Zia is himself an author of The Faith Understood and The Enduring Faith and Timeless Truths of Fulton Sheen.

In 2025, the store is expanding to allow for even more community building.

“The first floor will be an extension of the store as well as a venue for lectures and gatherings of various types, with the entire second floor being dedicated to the Shroud of Turin and a permanent exhibit of posters by Carlo Acutis, the most famous being the segment on the ‘Eucharistic Miracles of the World,” Zia told the Register. “There will also be a permanent exhibit of approximately 300 relics.”

The Kansas City-Kansas Leaven also covered Pace e Bene.

Scott and Michelle Varga, visitors from Phoenix, told the newspaper they found a book they needed for catechism class and drank coffee in the store.

“The ambiance and the community stand out in this shop,” Scott told the Leaven. “You are greeted as soon as you walk in the door. You see kids laughing, people studying, and you feel the holiness throughout the entire building. It is beautiful.”

Julia Zia told the Leaven, “I just love that I get to interact with all of the customers, such as all of these college students that I never usually get a chance to talk to because I’m a stay-at-home mom.”

Dr. Richard White, another Benedictine College theologian, calls the store “Pace e Bene, where hospitality is an everyday virtue,” according to Mark.

Zia called the store a “ministry of presence,” and told the Leaven: “We wanted to find a way to concretely build Christian culture in our community.”

“Keeping an independent bookstore in business when virtually any title can be ordered instantly online is a calling that blends a love for reading with a desire to bring people together,” the Register said. “Rooted in local communities, these spaces invite conversation, exploration of the mind and heart, and a place for customers to pause and rest a while.”

By Editorial Staff