In the last months of his long life, Cardinal Konig expressed the wish to record what was most important as a way forward for the Church and for Christians generally. At a time when the Austrian Church was rocked by scandal (paedophile priests, pornography in seminaries, the corpse of a dead priest floating down the Danube) this wise and holy man has been and will continue to be seen as a man of quite exceptional importance.

The book, all written in the first person, is concerned with openness - that openness advocated by John XXIII when he talked of opening the windows of the Church...