Memory and Identity

Reflecting on the most challenging issues and events of his turbulent times, Pope John Paul II reveals his personal thoughts in a truly historic document. The world's greatest communicator offers a moving insight into his intellectual and spiritual journey and pastoral experience. Each chapter suggests the answer to a question which either exercised his mind or which he provoked in discussion with laymen and priests. Using the encounters at his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo where conversations took place with leading intellectuals - philosophers as well as theologians - Pope John Paul II addresses in his book many of the questions which arose from these discussions. Here he leaves for posterity an intellectual and spiritual testament in an attempt to seek the answer to defining problems that vex our lives. The book ends with the Pope's first ever published comments on the assassination attempt upon his life in 1981. The conversational tone and form of this book indicates to the reader that this is not an academic thesis, more of a friendly talk. Each chapter is, as it were, the answer to a question which many of us carry in our heads or hearts.

Born Karol Wojtyla in 1920, His Holiness Pope John Paul II was ordained a priest in 1947. He was created a cardinal in 1967. He became Pope on 16th October 1978. Pope John Paul II has already published several monographs straddling theology, philosophy and social policy. He has written plays and poetry, a special account of his pastoral experience in Krakow and collections of sermons delivered in far-flung countries.