Tomáš Špidlík was born in Boskovice, now in the Czech Republic, in 1919. In 1938, he entered the Department of Philosophy at the University of Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. In the following year, he entered the Jesuits. In 1951, Spidlik began broadcasting programs from Vatican Radio to the countries behind the Iron Curtain calling for freedom. Among others, he met with Alexander Dubcek, the former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and Václav Havel, who became President of Czechoslovakia and...

Troy W. Martin, Ph.D. is an author and professor of religious studies at Saint Xavier University in Chicago. He currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Tu Weiming is professor of Chinese History at Harvard Univeristy. He has also co- edited Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World(State Univ. of New York, 2000) and Confucianism and Human Rights (Columbia University Press, 1998).

Hans Urs von Balthasar was a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest who was to be created a cardinal of the Catholic Church but died before the ceremony. He is considered one of the most important Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century.

Archimandrite Vassilios Bakoyannis was born in Greece in 1953 and was ordained in 1980. He serves in the metropolis of Patras, Greece. He received a bachelor's degree in theology from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, a master in theology from St. Vladimir Seminary, New York, and a PhD in theology from Atlantic International University, USA. Since 1975, he has authored over 50 spiritual books, several of which have been translated from Greek to English, Romanian, Russian, Arabic, Italian, German and Indonesian.

Walter Cardinal Kasper was born in Heidenheim-Brenz, Germany, in 1933 and was ordained in 1957. He studied at the University of Tübingen where he later became professor of dogmatic theology. He also taught in the United States at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in 1983. In 1987 he was ordained bishop of Rottenberg-Stuttgart, Germany. Widely respected for his work in Christian ecumenical relations, Kasper was chosen in 1979 as one of a dozen Catholic theologians to sit on the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission, one of...

Wendy M. Wright has taught the history of spirituality at the Weston School of Theology, Emmanuel College, the University of Nebraska, and Creighton University, She is the author of Sacred Dwelling and her articles on the spiritual life have appeared in such magazines as Weavings and Praying. She lives with her husband and three children in Omaha, Nebraska.