The Beatification of Pope John Paul II: When the Wall Fell

. . . In his 1948 book, The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill wrote of a 1935 proposal to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suggesting that the Soviet Union should not suppress Catholicism, but should rather encourage it in order to gain favor with the Pope. Stalin famously responded, "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" Ironically, that conversation took place on May 13, 1935, forty-six years to the day before the Soviet Union tried to kill Pope John Paul II because he was the most feared man in all of Europe. The Pope survived. Stalin's successors in the Soviet Union learned the answer to his question far too late for their own survival. Karol Wojtyla has earned the place in history summarized by the title given to him by Father Richard John Neuhaus and other admirers. He helped rid the world of Satan's most earthly Evil Empire. Without doubt, he was - and is - Pope John Paul the Great. . . .