Church Leaders Help Herald Pope’s New Book

The Holy Father won’t be doing talk shows or signings, thanks, but nearly anybody else here would be pleased to come: The Vatican is wheeling out red-robed battalions to ballyhoo publication today of a book of personal reflections by Pope John Paul II.

“A fascinating, satisfying, moving book,” New York Cardinal John J. O’Connor told reporters at a special pre-publication briefing here. “It ought to be a bestseller,” said Archbishop William H. Keeler, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States.

In content, the book, titled “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” reiterates oft-aired papal positions on well-known themes from salvation to abortion. But the tone is chatty, one-on-one, intimate--a learned friend tossing chewy ideas across the hearth on a winter’s night.

“Perhaps what is new here is a revelation of his own unique approach, touches of his mysticism. It is a new approach that offers new insights into the man,” said O’Connor. Said Keeler: “Reading it is like opening several doors to the Holy Father’s heart. . . . Every word seems to count.”

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, keeper of Vatican orthodoxy, journeyed to Milan, Italy, on Wednesday to add his praise at a formal presentation of the work, being published simultaneously in 35 countries and 21 languages. Curia Cardinal Paul Poupard stayed home, where he told Vatican Radio that the book impressed him for “its great vivacity.”

Publisher Alfred A. Knopf, which reportedly paid from $6 million to $9 million for U.S. rights, says it has shipped more than 1 million copies for sale beginning this morning. The jacket price is $20.

The book’s publication had been timed to coincide with a scheduled papal trip to the United Nations and the northeastern United States this week. The trip was canceled because of the Pope’s slowness in recovering fully from surgery in the spring to repair a broken leg.

“The publisher anticipated enormous immediate sales if he had gone to the U.S., but I think it will sell steadily over a long period of time,” said O’Connor, who, with Keeler and other U.S. bishops, is attending a monthlong synod here on religious life.

A collection of 35 reflections, some first-person, the 50,000-word work was prompted by 20 written questions submitted to John Paul last year by Italian reporter Vittorio Messori for a television interview.

That interview never took place, but the Pope was intrigued by the questions and began answering them in his spare time, writing longhand in Polish, according to papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro, who helped arrange publication through Arnoldo Mondadori Editore in Milan. The Pope’s proceeds will all go to charities of his choosing, Navarro said.

“This is the first time a Pope has written something this way for publication outside ecclesiastical forms. It’s like a private conversation between the Pope and the reader,” said Navarro, who bounced from the Vatican briefing to the Milan presentation.

Issued as the Pope completes the 16th year of his reign, the reflections ricochet from the abstract to the concrete: from condemnation of abortion and “human tragedies” in which “the woman is the victim of male selfishness” to recollections of his boyhood friendship with Jews in Poland. “Anti-Semitism is a great sin against humanity,” the Pope writes, recalling horrors of the Holocaust.

The Pope quotes the Bible, contemporary philosophers and himself. He has publicly visited all of the issues many times before, but the reflections are leavened by his reader-friendly style and his personal experiences.

Mulling the fall of communism, in which he was a major actor, John Paul says it is simplistic to imagine that Divine Providence played a role in the collapse. “It fell as a consequence of its own mistakes and abuses. It proved to be a medicine more dangerous than the disease itself,” the Pope says.

In other reflections, the Pope examines questions such as “Does God exist?” “If so, why is He hiding?” and “Is Jesus really the son of God?” He also examines Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, finding that they share a “fundamental element and a common root.”