Illustrissimi: Letters from Pope John Paul I

by Giovanni Paolo I, Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, et al.

Book Overview

Letters to saints, authors, and illustrious historical figures, written for a monthly periodical when the future Pope was Cardinal Archbishop of Venice. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316535303
• ISBN13: 9780316535304
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Simply beautiful

I came across this book by chance, after reading an excerpt of it online. For me it was a wonderful surprise, to discover the wisdom of the pope I knew so little about. Each of his letters is crafted with simplicity and insightfulness, addressing issues that are still very much important today. The range of topics and the diversity of his allusions demonstrate Pope John Paul's intelligence, and yet his letters, written with such humor and humanity, are accessible to almost any audience. Like Cardinal Wright wrote in the foreword, the joy and faith evident in these letters are messages the modern world so desperately needs to hear.

WISDOM JOY AND GRACE FROM HIS MOST EMINENT HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL THE GREATER

This book grants us the joy and healing of experiencing the glorious and joyful wisdom and theology of the great and poor man who too quickly served us servants as Pope John Paul the First. This book reveals how and why he must ever remain the First, the pre-eminent, the Greater of the John Pauls. This book reveals how nearly we remained a vibrant, vital, relevant, important, clarified, coherent, intelligent, loving, spiritual, challenging Church in the modern world, rather than the punishingly costly instrument for the personal mobilized self-glorification and brutally imposed limited vision of his successor. These words come from our final Universal, Apostolic, Catholic Pope, who does not as now treat the universal Church as a Germanic seminary classroom, passing out grades according to his particular orthodoxy. For, this book reveals the great and universal compassion, joy and wisdom which was to be in continuation with the great Popes of joy John XXIII and of prudent widom Paul VI, rather than the decimated and crabby kingdom in which we now discover ourselves. Read this book to remember who we really are, and who we are really called to be. Pope John Paul the Greater continued editing and revising this work of fictional letters to great figures of fiction and of history until shortly before his mysterious and unexpeceted death, having been named Pope in the briefest conclave in history. The title in Latin might read in English "To the great ones", "To the illustrious" but these letters certainly fell from the pen of a great and illustrious one. We Catholics gratefully receive this message in lieu of the great prophetic encyclicals which would have called us all together in loving joy and compassionate mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, rather than dividing us along secular political lines like a Polish National subdiocese. Within these pleasant pages we find our true Faith in action. Any Catholic, especially in the programs for new converts, and especially we veteran and life long practitioners of Roman Catholicism, find solid nourishment within these rare pages, and the eternal words of our faith as applied brilliantly to familiar modern paradigms. Letters are written by this great Pope to Mark Twain, GK Chesterton, Charles Dickens (and separately to the Pickwick Club), to Marconi, Petrarch and to Pinocchio, among many others. We also read here letters written to our great saints, including Saint Luke, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Bonaventure, etc. The collection closes with a trepidatious memo to Jesus, which we must all dare to read to noursih our own communication with our Lord and Savior. The collection opens with a very thoughtful, reflective and instructive general essay by John Cardinal Wright inspired by our brief Pope's infectious sincere smile, and a brief eulogy for the author by Father Angelo Beghetto. Read it today, and dare to smile, and discover yourself and our Faith as you laugh out loud u

WISDOM JOY AND GRACE FROM HIS MOST EMINENT HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL THE GREATER

This book grants us the joy and healing of experiencing the glorious and joyful wisdom and theology of the great and poor man who too quickly served us servants as Pope John Paul the First. This book reveals how and why he must ever remain the First, the pre-eminent, the Greater of the John Pauls. This book reveals how nearly we remained a vibrant, vital, relevant, important, clarified, coherent, intelligent, loving, spiritual, challenging Church in the modern world, rather than the punishingly costly instrument for the personal mobilized self-glorification and brutally imposed limited vision of his successor. These words come from our final Universal, Apostolic, Catholic Pope, who does not as now treat the universal Church as a Germanic seminary classroom, passing out grades according to his particular orthodoxy. For, this book reveals the great and universal compassion, joy and wisdom which was to be in continuation with the great Popes of joy John XXIII and of prudent widom Paul VI, rather than the decimated and crabby kingdom in which we now discover ourselves. Read this book to remember who we really are, and who we are really called to be. Pope John Paul the Greater continued editing and revising this work of fictional letters to great figures of fiction and of history until shortly before his mysterious and unexpeceted death, having been named Pope in the briefest conclave in history. The title in Latin might read in English "To the great ones", "To the illustrious" but these letters certainly fell from the pen of a great and illustrious one. We Catholics gratefully receive this message in lieu of the great prophetic encyclicals which would have called us all together in loving joy and compassionate mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, rather than dividing us along secular political lines like a Polish National subdiocese. Within these pleasant pages we find our true Faith in action. Any Catholic, especially in the programs for new converts, and especially we veteran and life long practitioners of Roman Catholicism, find solid nourishment within these rare pages, and the eternal words of our faith as applied brilliantly to familiar modern paradigms. Letters are written by this great Pope to Mark Twain, GK Chesterton, Charles Dickens (and separately to the Pickwick Club), to Marconi, Petrarch and to Pinocchio, among many others. We also read here letters written to our great saints, including Saint Luke, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Bonaventure, etc. The collection closes with a trepidatious memo to Jesus, which we must all dare to read to nourish our own communication with our Lord and Savior. The collection opens with a very thoughtful, reflective and instructive general essay by John Cardinal Wright inspired by our brief Pope's infectious sincere smile, and a brief eulogy for the author by Father Angelo Beghetto. Read it today, and dare to smile, and discover yourself and our Faith as you laugh out loud u

Letters from the Pope we never knew

This book is one of the closest pieces of work that we have to finding out what went on in the mind of John Paul I, Pope for a mere thirty-three days. Here, written when he was Patriarch of Venice, he writes to various people in literary and church history, and also in fiction. An amusing and witty book. Albino Luciani gets to the heart of the subject in each letter, and shows that sometimes the best answers are the most simple ones.