Encyclical Letter on Christian Hope

The present day crisis of faith, Pope Benedict argues, is a crisis of Christian hope. In his second encyclical, the Holy Father presents a masterly survey of the abandonment of Christian hope in favour of faith in progress and technology, which has ultimately led to atheism and Communism and yet more suffering for humanity; whereas man's true hope is not in ideologies, but in God who has loved us to the end.

The document, which in fact does not refer to previous Papal documents but rather draws in particular on St Augustine and the Fathers of the Church and on several modern Saints and martyrs, ends with an encouragement to foster hope through prayer and to rediscover the practice of offering up our sufferings in order to imbue them with significance. Finally, Pope Benedict invites all to see the hope that there is in the judgement of God, in praying for the dead and in the purification of purgatory.