Cardinal Sarah to Publish Book on Today’s ‘Spiritual, Moral and Political Crisis’

The prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship says the new volume will be the last but “most important” of a series of three books.

Cardinal Robert Sarah
Cardinal Robert Sarah (photo: Edward Pentin photo)

Cardinal Robert Sarah is to publish a new book, this time on the “profound spiritual, moral and political crisis in the contemporary world.”

The book, the last volume of three that he has written with the French author Nicolas Diat, will be “the most important” due to what he says is the “decadence of our time” that has “all the faces of mortal peril.”

The cardinal revealed the news in a short message posted on Facebook this afternoon.

The prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments said he was “pleased to announce the release in France, on March 20, of my new book made with Nicolas Diat.”

The book's French title is Le soir approche et déjà le jour baisse (Evening approaches and the day is now almost over), and is taken from the New Testament account of the disciples’ encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:28-30): 

“As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So, he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.”

The 73-year old Guinean cardinal said that after his previous two books with Diat — God or Nothing, and the Power of Silence — this is the “last volume of the triptych I wanted to write.”

God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith was a 2015 autobiographical interview detailing how he was inspired by missionary priests who had made great sacrifices to bring the faith to their remote village. He then recalls how he went on to become a priest amid the oppression of the Church by the Guinean government and then later bishop and cardinal. 

His second book, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, was published in 2017. In it, Cardinal Sarah gave a spiritual treatise on the strength of silence at a time when technology penetrates people’s lives and materialism exerts a powerful influence in the modern world.

Silence, he wrote, “is more important than any other human work, for it expresses God. The true revolution comes from silence; it leads us toward God and others so as to place ourselves humbly and generously at their service."

Both books were critically acclaimed bestsellers. 

Ignatius Press, which has published the cardinal’s previous two books in English, is planning on publishing this volume in English on or around Sept. 1.