The Enduring Legacy Of Pope John Paul II

This excerpt is taken from Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church by H. W. Crocker III. (Regnery History, 2023)

The Era Of Pope John Paul II

In October 1978, the College of Cardinals chose a remarkable man. The newly elevated Pope John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope in more than 450 years. He was a Pole who had lived through World War II, witnessing both Nazi terror and Communist persecution. He was a scholar, philosopher, and linguist, but also a poet, playwright, and actor, as well as an athlete. Before becoming a priest he had had a girlfriend, considered a secular career, and worked as a manual laborer. It is to the great benefit of the Church that he felt called to a priestly vocation and pursued it — as was necessary — like a secret agent, studying surreptitiously and eluding Nazi death squads that marked every young Pole of military age for death. He served a suffering Church in Soviet-occupied Poland. When he was elevated to the papacy, Soviet KGB chief, and later head of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov immediately recognized a threat to the Soviet regime.