God’s Candidate: The Life and Times of Pope John Paul I by Paul Spackman (Gracewing 2008: £12.99)

In October of 2021 Pope Francis approved a miracle of the healing of a young girl, suffering from brain seizures, due to the intercession of Pope John Paul I ( Pontiff for thirty three days in 1978). This cure of an Argentinian teenager, inexplicable to the doctors treating her, opens the way to the beatification of the so-called ‘Smiling Pope’. People are fascinated by the Papacy which is at the same time an influential and controversial institution. This study of the Patriarch of Venice elevated to the position of Supreme Pontiff provides a welcome assessment of his pontificate and how it influenced the Church at the time and still does in the twenty first century whose attitude to his being Pope was, as Paul Spackman writes in his preface was that of a pastor, whose parish just happened to be that of the whole world.