Portrait of a Pope

On October 23 and 24 the Italian television station RaiUno transmitted a very interesting biography of His Holiness, the late Pope John Paul I. It was a very moving and convincing portrait of this Holy Pope whose reign was surely the shortest in history, only 33 days. But his genuine, serene smile together with his characteristic humility had attracted a lot of sympathy and his short reign was truly of value to humanity in general.

This beautiful biography in two episodes was very moving indeed as both the actor Neri Marcorè and the director Giorgio Capitani gave their best to make it as real as possible. His Holiness suffered from a fragile health and he died owing to a pulmonary embolism, a large blood clot, and not as was stated in some silly book, owing to a conspiracy to assassinate him.

When he was Cardinal, in Venice, he wrote two volumes of 20 imaginary letters each, to some very famous personalities, even to Jesus Christ, called, Illustrissimi. They are to be found translated in Maltese by Fr Noel Grima and I encourage readers to read them as they give a very interesting insight into the character of this holy and spiritual Pope whose motto was "humility".

The present Pope Benedict XVI himself had very encouraging praise for this outstanding work by Rai. Let us hope that television will give us more of such beautiful autobiographies.