SOURCE: “Professor in Slippers,” in Times Literary Supplement, November 11, 1994, p. 32.

In the following review, Hebblethwaite examines John Paul's religious and political views in Crossing the Threshold of Hope.

Librarians will have problems cataloguing this work. The author appears on the title-page as “His Holiness Pope John Paul II”. Perhaps the easiest thing would be to put it under Messori, Vittorio, ed. Then it would join the celebrated interviewer's other books like The Ratzinger Report—which had their fifteen minutes of fame.

Pope John Paul has been interviewed before. In 1984, André Frossard (author of God Exists, I've Met Him) published “Be Not Afraid!”: André Frossard in conversation with John Paul II. Frossard's is the better book for penetrating the Pope's Polish mind. He was allowed to probe away through supplementaries. Messori, though at one point claiming to be a gadfly, fails to buzz and is totally overawed by his...