Pope John Paul Seeks Publisher

Posted on October 7, 2004

Vatican representatives at the Frankfurt Book Fair are shopping the Holy Father's latest book to international publishers, according the the Associated Press. Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums, is due out in Italy in 2005, but no publishers have yet been found for other countries. The Polish-born pope's book is essentially a transcript of conversations he had in Polish with two close friends in 1993 at his summer residence near Rome.

The Pontiff held a discussion with Krzysztof Michalski, a political philosopher at the Institute of Human Science in Vienna, Austria and the late Rev. Jozef Tishner. The book examines Europe over the last 100 years, seeking to identify the "roots of evil" such as the rise of communism, fascism and Nazism. The discussions also touch on issues such as the relationship between church and state, said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls at a news conference.

"It is not a pessimistic book at all. ... It is a long dialogue trying to understand the root of the problems humanity has been facing," he said.