Books by Rino Fisichella

This volume does not intend to be a biography of Paul VI whose personality, teaching, and pontificate have been the object of increasing scholarly attention in recent years. The aim here is rather to increase our awareness of the holiness of this pope-whose influence over the course of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century cannot be underestimated-through the cause for his beatification of which the author, as a member of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, was the Reporting Judge (Relator or Ponens Causae).

The thrust for a so-called new evangelization has been one of the most important actions of the Pontificate of Benedict XVI. This expression is rooted in the Second Vatican Council and was used for the first time by John Paul II in 1979, to signify the desire to announce the Christian message with greater impact and freshness. In this era of ideological and cultural crisis within Western society, the Church has the delicate task of guiding man and society towards salvation, towards a life closer to the word of Christ. To this end, Benedict XVI has created a new Vatican department, dedicated specifically to the evangelization of the Western world, under the guidance of Archbishop Fisichella. In this important book, which is a cultural and religious manifesto for the Year of Faith, Archbishop Fisichella explains what constitutes the great task in which he, and the Church, are called upon to propose the centrality of the family, promoting the ethics of finance, redeveloping the presence of Catholics in politics and especially urging people not to get trapped in isolation and indifference.The fact that you call it "new" is not intended to qualify the content of evangelization, but the condition and the way in which it is made. Benedict XVI's Apostolic Letter Ubicumque et semper rightly emphasizes that it is considered appropriate "to provide adequate answers because the whole Church is present in the contemporary world and with a missionary zeal can promote a new evangelization."