Vatican City, Feb 22, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Memory and IdentitySome of those present included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, director of the Holy See Press Office, and Paolo Mieli, editor of the Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera," which is published by the Rizzoli group which also produced the Italian edition of the Pope's book.
Navarro-Valls told those gathered that the book is a result of conversations the Pope had with two Polish philosophers, Josef Tishner and Krystof Michalski, in his summer residence at Castelgandolfo in 1993.
He noted that the conversations were recorded and later transcribed. The manuscript was saved for some years until the Pope read it and decided to make it into a book after having made some corrections.