If one is interested in Catholic dialogue with atheism, I would recommend looking at the ressourcement cultural movement of the first half of the 20th Century (Eerdmans has a series named after this loose collection of diverse authors). A great inspiration to these authors was French poet Charles Péguy (the Wikipedia article doesn’t do justice to the complexity of his thought – try instead the Portal of the Mystery of Hope). This group included Henri de Lubac, Jean Danielou SJ, MD Chenu OP, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, and others.

Henri de Lubac SJ engaged enlightenment socialist materialist atheism in his study The Drama of Atheist Humanism, and he also did work on the dialogue with Buddhism. His collection of essays, Theology in History, shows the breadth of his thought. These essays are practically an outline to the encyclicals of JPII. It should also be noted that Vatican II has been called a vindication of de Lubac’s ideas.

Ratzinger aka Benedict XVI is definitely shares with this group an openness to dialogue with atheists and non-Christians. See, for example, his brief tutoring of a young Jewish man: https://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/fields042505.asp. In addition to his dialogue with Judaism, he has also engaged atheists. See for example Sandro Magister’s column (a great if not infallible journalistic resource): https://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/20037?eng=y . Benedict XVI takes seriously atheist claims and arguments and responds to them, which is one reason that European ideologues like to caricature him (demonize him, if you will…). It was also Ratzinger by the way who during the JPII papacy who wrote the documents which rehabilitated the controversial critic of the Church Antonio Rosmini.