“LET my personal notes be burned,” was Pope John Paul II’s instruction long before his death in 2005. It was not followed by Cardinal Dziwisz; and now Joanna Rzepa has translated into English a papal journal (with the Cardinal’s preface) that, Archbishop George Stack suggests in his introduction, is the most privileged insight into a pope’s spirituality since John XXIII’s Journal of a Soul. In God’s Hands: The spiritual diaries 1962-2003 by Pope St John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla (Collins, £25 (£22.50); 978-0-00-810105-3), is a 500-page hardback, illustrated with photos of some of the original pages. The contents, reverently transcribed, will be of most interest to Roman Catholics with a special devotion to this canonised pope, and reinforce the impression of a single-minded quest to align his will with God’s as he perceived it to be.
