"Nearly a billion believers consider Pope John Paul II to be God's mouthpiece on earth. He wields extraordinary influence as a world statesman. Thus it was a real coup when Tad Szula, author of 18 books and once a reporter for the New York Times, obtained unprecedented interviews with the pontiff and his associates, as well as access to private documents. Here is Szulc's unauthorized, yet sympathetic biography. Szulc discloses how Eastern bloc communists helped Karol Wojtyla (the polish pontiff's given name) climb to the papacy, then later plotted to neutralize him as Pope. We also learn that John Paul II, while he was Cardinal Wojtyla, drafted Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae vitae on contraception. Now, as the next millennium approaches, is the Pope presiding over one of the Catholic Church's deepest periods of crisis? "Vital reading about one of the most important figures of our time.".
