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The End and the Beginning
Pope John Paul II — The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy
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With these words, world-renowned author and NBC Vatican analyst George Weigel begins his long-awaited sequel to the international bestseller Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. More than ten years in the making, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy tells the dramatic story of the Pope’s battle with communism in light of new and recently disclosed information and brings to a close Weigel’s landmark portrait of a man who not only left an indelible mark on the Catholic Church, but also changed the course of world history.
When he was elected pope in the fall of 1978, few people had ever heard of the charismatic Karol Wojty³a. But in a very short time he would ignite a revolution of conscience in his native Poland that would ultimately lead to the collapse of European communism and death of the Soviet Union. What even fewer people knew was that the KGB, the Polish Secret Police, and the East German Stasi had been waging a dangerous, decades-long war against Wojty³a and the Vatican itself. Weigel, with unprecedented access to many Soviet-era documents, chronicles John Paul’s struggle against the dark forces of communism.
Moreover, Weigel recounts the tumultuous last years of John Paul’s life as he dealt with a crippling illness as well as the “new world disorder” and revelations about corruption within the Catholic Church. Weigel’s thought-provoking biography of John Paul II concludes with a probing and passionate assessment of a man who lived his life as a witness to hope in service to the Christian ideals he embraced.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 14, 2010 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780307715869
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780307715869
- File size: 7085 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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October 15, 2010
When Weigel (Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics & Public Policy Ctr.) wrote what is probably still the best biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope, over ten years ago, the Pope was still in good health, and the repercussions of the collapse of communism in 1989 were yet to be fully understood. Now Weigel concentrates not only on the end of John Paul's pontificate but on the early years of his episcopacy, now seen in a new light because of the availability of material from Soviet archives. He deftly details the former Karol Wojtyla's battle against totalitarianism throughout his life and the Soviet Union's attempts to minimize the damage they perceived he could do to the communist system. He also examines John Paul's reaction to his crippling illness at the end of his life and finds wanting the Vatican reaction to the current sex abuse crisis in the United States. VERDICT This admiring but not uncritical biography will be of interest certainly to those who admire John Paul II, but it is also important for the light it sheds on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Soviet Union.--Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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September 15, 2010
Evidently, 1,000 pages were not enough space to adequately survey the life of Pope John Paul II in Weigels biography, Witness to Hope (1999). Although the three sections in this work are designed to supplement that earlier one, only the first takes a thematic approach. The theme explored is communism and covers four decades of John Pauls life, before and during his papacy. The popes struggle against communism was covered sporadically in Witness but without as much detail or behind-the-scenes glimpses as there are here. The last event recorded in the earlier book was the Great Jubilee of 2000, five years before the pontiffs death. The final years of John Pauls papacy are covered in the second section, while the third is strictly reflective. The key question here is, What will Pope John Paul II be remembered for? Weigel explores numerous angles to his legacy, including his personal character and a strong spirit of ecumenism. A solid wrap.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)
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