Trying to awaken the conscience of the world to reject the “culture of death” which creates “structures of sin,” St. Pope John Paul II wrote in Evangelium Vitae, “How can we fail to consider the violence against life done to millions of human beings, especially children, who are forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger because of an unjust distribution of resources between peoples and between social classes? [...]

The wisdom born of literature instils in the reader greater perspective, a sense of limits, the ability to value experience over cognitive and critical thinking, and to embrace a poverty that brings extraordinary riches. [...]