Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II will release a US version of a book that tells of his struggles as prelate in communist-era Poland.  The book, "Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way," spans a 20-year period from the late 1950s through his election as the first Polish pope in 1978.  A publishing house in the US bought the rights for around $2 million in 2003.  The sale of the book is quite disappointing.  And according to a book industry observer, it has sold only 18,000 copies since its publication in September 2004.

Pope's next book

Communism was a "necessary evil" that God allowed to happen in the 20th century in order to create opportunities for good after its demise, Pope John Paul says in his new book.  "The full extent of the evil that was raging through Europe was not seen by everyone, not even by those of us who were living at the epicenter. We were totally swallowed up in a great eruption of evil," he says.  "Both the Nazis during the war and, later, the Communists in Eastern Europe, tried to hide what they were doing from public opinion. For a long time, the West did not want to believe in the extermination of the Jews," he writes.

"Memory and Identity," which is due to be published early next year, is the ailing 84-year-old pontiff´s latest and perhaps last book intended for a mass circulation audience.  The pope's royalties from "Memory and Identity" will go to charity as have his previous titles.  All of his previous books have been international bestsellers.

In one chapter, the pope, who lived through both Nazism and Communism in his native Poland, reflects on the meaning of evil in life and in history. "I have personally experienced the reality of the ´ideologies of evil´. It remains indelibly fixed in my memory," he says in the book, which is a series of conversations he had in Polish with fellow philosophers in the summer of 1993.

Excerpts of the book, which was announced Wednesday (6 Oct 2004) at the Frankfurt Book Fair, were made available by the Italian publisher Rizzoli.