Il magistero di Giovanni Paolo I

A rich library experienced as a working workshop, an integral part of the papers of his private archives, John Paul I's Personal Library, originally consisting of some five thousand volumes, traversed all the locations in which he exercised his ministry. According to the original arrangement, papers and library, constituted, in fact, a corpus in a single location and function and united came to the Vatican the day after his election.

After his death, the library was partly dispersed. The largest part is now found at the Diocesan Library "Benedict XVI" in Venice. Promoted by the John Paul I Vatican Foundation, the conference intends to present the work of reconstituting, protecting and enhancing the book collection that belonged to Albino Luciani and to delve into his magisterium in light of his library on the occasion of the publication of the critical edition of the work Illustrissimi, the successful sylloge of forty imaginary letters published in 1976.

Emblematic of Albino Luciani's vast education and the close connection between the papers and books of his library, the work also leads one to reflect on the particular familiarity with the literary dimension as the connotative canon characterizing his entire oral and written production. Neither apostolic exhortations nor encyclicals were John Paul I's legacy, but an exquisitely literary text, Illustrissimi, the fourth edition of which is published, by St. Anthony's Messenger editions, with the papal imprimatur initialed a few days before his death.