Man of the Century: The Life and Times of Pope John Paul II

Publishers Weekly Book of the Year
Booklist Editor's Choice, 1997

A man who has covered the Cold War?as an investigative reporter with the Wall Street Journal and then host of PBS's The Kwitny Report?decides to profile a man of peace.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kwitny is a journal ist, not an academic historian. He communicates unstuffily, even when he is explaining philosophy. His career has largely been spent covering the cold war, and he has developed a grandness of perspective that academics, mostly specialists, seldom acquire. Best, he does not grind axes or ride hobbyhorses; he briefly, prefatorily announces his opinion of his subject and then lets the record speak for itself. In short, he may be the perfect biographer of Pope John Paul II while that pontiff lives. He constructs the portrait of a man who, pious from childhood and, although Kwitny does not say so, obviously charismatic from childhood, too, decided to become a priest only during the crucible experience of World War II but then found the asceticism, the meditativeness, and the altruism that religious vocation can foster all utterly consonant with his nature. An intellectual, Karol Wojtyla also forged a theology of active faith. Tempered by his own preternatural equanimity (another trait evident from childhood on), Wojtyla, as priest, bishop, archbishop, and finally pope, lived out this active faith in ways that Westerners, obsessed with his thinking on sexual issues and abortion, have not appreciated. Kwitny says John Paul II's greatest significance is as the pacific moral force behind the end of the cold war and the fall of totalitarian communism in Europe. That is why Kwitny calls him the man of the century. Ray Olson

Stereotyped by admirers and critics alike, Pope John Paul II finds in former Wall Street Journal reporter Kwitny (Acceptable Risks, 1992, etc.) a biographer who takes his full measure. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was already a formidable intellect, mystic, and Polish patriot when he made the surprising ascent from his archdiocese of Krakow to Rome in 1978. Kwitny reveals, for what seems to be the first time, how Wojtyla's Catholic School Ethics (1953) anticipated methods of nonviolent protest used by Martin Luther King Jr. a few years later; how he nurtured many of the intellectuals who later formed Solidarity; and how he secretly ordained priests who would serve elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain. Just as important, Wojtyla pressed the regime to adhere to promises of noninterference with the Church and protection of human rights. As pope he has also denounced dictators and Mafia chieftains in their own territories; owned up to past Church mistakes in alienating scientists, other Christian churches, and Jews; and called for a democratic welfare state that would avoid the worst extremes of both communism and capitalism. Yet Kwitny notes that these actions have been overlooked because of the Western media's fixation on his opposition to birth control and abortion, the pope's sensitive position as head of a worldwide organization, and self-serving claims by Reagan administration officials to have undermined communism. In particular, Kwitny argues that the ``Holy Alliance'' between Reagan and the pope to save Solidarity-- postulated in Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi's recent His Holiness (not reviewed) and Peter Schweizer's Victory (1994)--steals credit from John Paul and the Poles themselves. While not by any means uncritical of the pontiff (scoring his crackdown on Church dissenters and the lack of concern for finances and clerical anguish over celibacy that allowed scandals to erupt), Kwitny offers a strong, convincing argument for him as one of the century's great proponents of nonviolence and freedom. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.