Volume 40, Number 14 · August 12, 1993
Caves of the Vatican
By Xavier Rynne
Paul VI: The First Modern Pope
by Peter Hebblethwaite
Paulist Press, 749 pp., $29.95
Memories and Hopes
by Leon-Joseph Cardinal Suenens
Veritas/distributed by Ignatius Press, 408 pp., $19.95 (paper)
My Witness for the Church
by Bernard Häring, translated by Leonard Swidler
Paulist Press, 236 pp., $14.95 (paper)
Peter Hebblethwaite's timely and well-documented biography of Giovanni Battista Montini (1897–1978), whom he calls 'the first modern pope,' brings into focus the character of a remarkable prelate, whose intelligence, ecclesial background, and career paradoxically made him overqualified for the position of supreme pastor of the Roman Catholic Church, to which he was elected in 1963. Tacitus undoubtedly would have rated him capax imperandi nisi imperasset—'a capable governor, if only he had never governed.'
Review, 4513 words
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