CLAUDIO LUFFOLI/AP Pope John Paul II waves to pilgrims in September 1989

Monday, April 13, 1998
In November 1989 word went out that Mikhail Gorbachev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, would stop in Rome en route to a summit meeting with President George Bush. In Rome he would have an audience with Pope John Paul II.

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This was glasnost, 200 proof. The head of the communist world had bumped into the answer to Stalin's question: How many divisions has the Pope? And the Pope was engaging in spiritual geopolitics at summit level: he wanted human rights for the faithful in Russia. Karol Wojtyla's training was extensive, dating back to discreet studies for the priesthood under Nazi occupation in Poland. After that, parish work and academic studies under communist rule, leading in 1963 to the episcopacy in Cracow. Pity poor Gorbachev. Seventy-two years of formal national commitment to atheism, backed by the Gulag, and now, 1989, a street poll revealed that 40% of Soviet citizens believed in God.

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