How We Know For Certain

Pope John Paul II was a man of heroic virtue with nary a skeleton in the closet:

...From 1945 onwards, Weigel reports, Wojtyla was under secret police surveillance. His closest friends and collaborators were constantly targeted to betray him. Especially as Archbishop of Krakow, he had to be constantly wary of even his colleagues and household staff, in case infiltrators had been successful. When he arrived in Rome, knowing that there were spies afoot and that the Vatican had no counter-intelligence capability, John Paul handled the communist file within the papal apartment, not trusting sensitive documents to his own bureaucracy.

"It was us against them – all the time," confided John Paul's longtime secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz. Indeed, the battle for freedom in the Soviet empire was total, for the totalitarian state claimed control over all aspects of life, even the family and the Church...

Weigel's new book opens the curtain on that drama as it was lived for decades behind the Iron Curtain. It is the story of one man to be sure, but also of more than one. The SB would have crushed Karol Wojtyla if he had been truly alone. That he was not alone, but inspired an ever growing number to join him, was the secret to the victory. That victory too bears remembering this Remembrance Day.