Witness to Hope

With unprecedented cooperation from John Paul II and the people who knew and worked with him throughout his life, George Weigel offers a groundbreaking portrait of the Pope as a man, a thinker, and a leader whose religious convictions defined a new approach to world politics- and changed the course of history. The man born Karol Jozef Wojtyla played a crucial yet underrated role in some of this century's most momentous events. This includes the fall of communism, the Holy See/Israel negotiations of 1991-92, the disintegration of the Nicaraguan, Chilean, and Paraguayan regimes during the 1980s, and the unprecedented papal visit to Cuba. Witness to Hope explains how it is that this "man from a far country," as he describes himself to the Roman crowds on the night of his election, did all of that, and what his accomplishments might portend for the future of both the Church and the world. George Weigel, a Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Roman Catholic theologian and one of America's leading commentators on issues of religion and public life. He has been writing about the Pope since the first days of his pontificate, and became good friends with him. He is the author or editor of fourteen books, including The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and The Collapse of Communism. "A tremendous achievement." - The Washington Post