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Article: His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time.
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- January 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi. Doubleday. 582 pp. $27.50.
Reviewed by George Weigel
On October 21, 1978, five days after the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II, the "liberal" Polish Communist journal Polityka opined that, since World War II, Poland had been "a special example of a creative and fruitful co-existence between nonbelievers and Catholics"--which seems, in retrospect, an almost unimaginably self-delusional judgment, even by Communist standards. Polityba's editors may have hoped that, with Wojtyla's ascension to the papacy, a period of "mutual understanding" would ensue, securing the Yalta legacy in a continued ...