Page 16 - Nancy Wiechec News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

It was a two-week whirlwind that changed my life forever, that first visit of mine to Poland in June 1991. Looking back on it, I’m reminded of something H.L. Mencken wrote of a similarly transformative experience: “It was brain-fagging and back-breaking, but it was grand beyond compare an adventure of the first chop, a razzle-dazzle superb and elegant, a circus in forty rings.” My first weeks in Poland were all of that, and more. For what I learned in dozens of conversations during that fortnight became the crux of “The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism”; the publication of that book (the first to argue that John Paul II and the Church had played pivotal roles in the collapse of European communism) led to my first serious conversation with the Polish pope; our relationship ripened over the next few years to the point where, in 1995, I rather boldly suggested to John Paul that I write his biography; and the rest, as they say, is history.

Israel generalWarminsko mazurskieUnited statesNowa hutaDefensor civitatisNancy wiechecKarol wojtyMaximilian kolbeCardinal adam stefan sapiehaJerzy turowiczCardinal franciszek macharskiFranciszek macharskiKazimierz jancarzJohn paulRodger potockiResistance church