Teachings for an Unbelieving World
ARCHBISHOP KAROL WOJTYLA
(REDEMPTORIST Publications, 160 PP, £15.95)
Tablet bookshop price £14.35 • tel 020 7799 4064

This newly discovered book was written when the future Pope John Paul II was Archbishop of Kraków. In it, he uses St Paul’s famous sermon to the people of Athens, relating to an altar inscribed “to an unknown God”, to provide a series of ­reflections. In these, he explores what was to be a major theme of his pontificate: that the human spirit has an innate yearning for the divine and an instinct for worship. Human beings, he wrote, thirst for answers to the great questions of life: why does anything exist, what purpose does life have, and what destiny awaits us.