Pope John Paul II - Crossing the Threshold of Hope

Translated from the Italian by
Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee

This Is a Borzoi Book
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Copyright 1994 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore
All rights reserved including the rights of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Translation copyright 1994 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., for permission to reprint scripture texts from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms, copyright 1991, 1986, 1970 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, D.C. 20017-1194. Reprinted by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved.

eISBN: 978-0-307-76457-7
LC 94-78675

v3.1

I N O CTOBER OF 1993 J OHN P AUL II WOULD complete fifteen years of his papacy. For the occasion the Holy Father accepted Italian Radio and Televisions proposal for a televised interview that would be transmitted by the major networks around the world. It would have been the first ever in the history of the papacy, a history which, over the centuries, has experienced just about everything. But never before had a successor to Peter participated in a live televised interview with a journalist whose questions were entirely of his own making.

I was told that I had been chosen to conduct the interview because of the many religious booksespecially The Ratzinger Report (1985)and articles I have written over the years, with the freedom of a layman, but also as a believer who knows that the Church is given not only to the clergy but to each of the baptized.

The Pope, however, did not take into consideration how relentless his schedule would be in September, which was the deadline for filming, and allowed enough time for the director and technicians to work on the material before the broadcast. In the end, the Popes many obligations prevented his participation and the project fell through at the last moment.

A few months passed. Then one day another telephone call came from the Vaticanagain entirely unforeseen. On the line was the Press Secretary for the Holy See, Dr. Joaqun Navarro-Valls, a very efficient, cordial, friendly Spanish psychiatrist who had gone into journalism and who had been one of the staunchest supporters of the interview. Dr. Navarro-Valls was the bearer of a message that (he assured me) had surprised even him. The Pope, he said, sent him to say: Even if there wasnt a way to respond to you in person, I kept your questions on my desk. They interested me. I didnt think it would be wise to let them go to waste. So I thought about them and, after some time, during the brief moments when I was free from obligations, I responded to them in writing. You have asked me questions, therefore you have a right to responses. I am working on them. I will let you have them. Then do with them what you think is appropriate.

Once again John Paul II confirmed his reputation for being the Pope of surprisesan attribute that has characterized him from the time of his election, which upset all predictions.

One day at the end of April 1994, during a meeting in my house with Dr. Navarro-Valls, he pulled from his briefcase a big white envelope. Inside was the text I had been told about, straight from the hands of the Pope himself. He had vigorously underlined many pointswhich the reader will find italicized in the text, according to the instructions of the author. Likewise, the space breaks separating one paragraph from another are also preserved. The title of the book was chosen by John Paul II. He wrote it himself on the cover of the folder containing his manuscript, specifying, however, that this was only a suggestion and that he would leave it up to the editors to make the final decision on the books title. We decided to keep his title exactly as written because we realized that it perfectly identified the heart of the message these pages convey.

A dutiful respect for a text in which every word counts obviously guided me in the editing work I was requested to do. I limited myself to the translation of Latin expressions, which appear in parentheses; to minimal readjustments in the punctuation; to the completion of proper names; to the suggestion of a synonym where a word was repeated in the same paragraph; and to the modification of somerareinaccuracies in the translation from the original Polish. Minutiae that in no way altered the content.

Introducing new questions into the text where needed was my most significant task. In fact, my original list of questions numbered only twenty. John Paul II had answered them with surprising diligence, without avoiding one of them. The fact that he had taken a journalist so seriously is yet more proofif there were ever a needof his humility, of his generous availability to hear our voices, those of the common Christians on the street.

The text, which will be published in Italy and simultaneously in all the major languages of the world, was examined and approved by the author himself. It is my duty to guarantee to the reader that the voice that resonatesin its humanity but also in its authorityis entirely that of the successor to Peter. It will now be the job of theologians and analysts of the papal teaching to face the problem of classifying a text that has no precedent and therefore poses new possibilities for the Church.

Above all else, the pages that follow make it clear that this is a Pope who is impatient in his apostolic zeal; a shepherd to whom the usual paths always seem insufficient; who looks for every means to spread the Good News to men; whoevangelicallywants to shout from the rooftops (today crowded with television antennae) that there is hope, that it has been confirmed, that it is offered to whoever wants to accept it. Even a conversation with a journalist is valued by this Pope as part of the tradition of Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians: I have become all things to all, to save at least some. All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may share in it (1 Cor 9:2223).

In such a climate all abstractions vanish. Dogma becomes flesh, blood, life. The theologian becomes witness and shepherd.

Vittorio Messori

Y OUR H OLINESS , MY FIRST QUESTION WILL go right to the point. Therefore, please understand if it is longer than those that follow.

In front of me is a man dressed in the white of ancient custom, with a cross over his chest. This man who is called the Pope (from father, in Greek) is a mystery in and of himself, a sign of contradiction. He is even considered a challenge or a scandal to logic or good sense by many of our contemporaries.

Confronted with the Pope, one must make a choice. The leader of the Catholic Church is defined by the faith as the Vicar of Jesus Christ (and is accepted as such by believers). The Pope is considered the man on earth who represents the Son of God, who takes the place of the Second Person of the omnipotent God of the Trinity.

Each Pope regards his role with a sense of duty and humility, of course, but also with an equal sense of confidence. Catholics believe this and therefore they call him Holy Father or Your Holiness.

Nevertheless, according to many others, this is an absurd and unbelievable claim. The Pope, for them, is not Gods representative. He is, instead, the surviving witness of ancient myths and legends that today the adult does not accept.