To sit down with the Pope and ask him directly about the great questions of the present time: about the world, culture and the life of the Church. It is undoubtedly a very interesting document, with a high testimonial value, a great book for the general public, and for the Christian in particular, which makes known in a simple, colloquial but at the same time serious and profound way, what the Pope thinks, what excites him and what worries him.

The book, published in Spain by publishing house Herder, gathers an interview of the German journalist Peter Seewald with the Holy Father Benedict XVI in Castelgandolfo during the summer of 2010. The colloquium has a direct, incisive, agile tone; the answers are often short, quick, but profound. Through his words, serene but energetic, the Pope's great intellectual stature shines with intensity. Sometimes the colloquium acquires personal accents, as when the Pope recalls his feelings and prayers of trust to the Lord at the moment of his election to the pontificate in the face of the overwhelming task that lay ahead of him, or when he affirms, aware of his limitations, that "I have been elected... and I do what I can".

The Holy Father reveals himself to be young and fighting, serene but determined, passionate for God, for the Church, for all humanity. Benedict XVI is aware that the Catholic Church, so often controversial and sometimes vilified, continues to be, in her path of fidelity to God and authenticity with respect to her mission statement, a beacon that illuminates the world of men in an age of anxieties, uncertainties and darkness; a moral reference for today's society.

In the interview the major issues of these five years of pontificate appear (without avoiding the polemic). We could highlight: the scandal of abuses, which are a call to humility and purification always necessary in the Church and in the world; the cultural crisis of the West that has made an idol of technical progress without a parallel advance in moral resources and that runs the risk of its own destruction; the ecological dangers of the planet and the global economic crisis that call into question the modern pretension of the exercise of freedom without responsibility; the presence in the culture of a relativism that has begun to take off the mask of tolerance and neutrality to show its true face: An aggressive and increasingly explicitly anti-Christian dictatorship.

The problems of today's culture are a challenge for the Church and her own internal dynamism, a call to conversion and to the life of faith, a challenge to "bring the priority of God to light once again". Secularism, withdrawal and the forgetfulness of God (especially in Europe), the ever more pronounced tendency to shape life without faith, and at times in open civil service examination to Christian values, highlight the need to pose to the world once again, both in the cultural discussion and in the life of every Christian, the essential question: the reality of the living God and staff who reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ, and who is ultimately written request who gives meaning and the ultimate answer to the longings of the human heart.