Word: sovietize
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...great scourges and his undaunted denouement was an unsettling second act, as more liberal believers realized that their shepherd could be autocratic, hardheaded and disapproving. For such disaffected followers, John Paul was not unlike another great Slavic moralist, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, lionized while his prophetic voice was raised against the Soviet behemoth and less welcome when he turned it on the victorious West. James Carroll, a former priest who has written frequently on the church and the Pope, says, "Americans clearly loved this man's goodness. But we were very, very uncomfortable with his absolute claims to moral certitude...
Then John Paul's personal history, his duties as Pontiff and the late 20th century's greatest drama merged in a breathtaking manner. The election of a Polish Pope posed an implicit challenge to Poland's Soviet-backed regime, a challenge John Paul quickly made immediate with two visits home. His first, in 1979, drew enormous, bloc-shaking crowds. On the next trip, after he told the restive populace to "be not afraid" and declared in the holy town of Czestochowa that "man cannot remain with no way out," the new Solidarity free-trade-union movement made him its virtual...
...next decade, John Paul, in secret contact with Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski and Soviet and U.S. leaders, adroitly balanced his role as the union's champion with his resolve that no Polish blood be spilled. When Jaruzelski, fearing a Soviet invasion, declared martial law in 1981, the Pope mystified the West by disagreeing with U.S. sanctions. But his forbearance allowed him to attain a position of near partnership with the communist regime. Poland rolled back martial law in 1983 and--with the acquiescence of Mikhail Gorbachev--communism itself in April 1989. The largely peaceful transition seems to have influenced Gorbachev...
Agca's motives remain shrouded. Italian police believed he was working at the behest of a Bulgarian government trying to satisfy a Soviet wish to be rid of Solidarity's patron. Italian journalists recently claimed to have seen East German files on Soviet involvement in a plot to kill the Pope...
John Paul II made the renunciation of coercive force the political center of his pontificate. His stout opposition to Soviet communism was built around nonviolence, and his dramatic support of the Polish resistance movement was key to its firm commitment to nonviolence too. Because the democratic opposition behind the Iron Curtain remained peaceful, Mikhail Gorbachev, in the climactic months of 1989, was able to respond to it peacefully. John Paul II is often credited with a crucial role in the fall of communism, but his role, against the expectations of all "realists," was defined by its nonviolence. War never again...