The papacy of John Paul II was different from the moment it began, twenty-three years ago.
He was the first non-Italian Pope. He came from Poland, a country that seemed, at least at the time, entrenched in the Eastern European communist bloc. That bloc has crumbled, in part through the Pope's efforts and, he would say, his prayers. And now, John Paul is tackling something tougher than political ideology. He's trying to bridge a chasm between religions.
In the past week, he reached out over a gap of a thousand years in Greece to try to heal a rift within the Christian faith, the split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Far from an easy task. Then, in Syria, he became the first Pope ever to worship in a mosque. The scars of the Crusades and the politics of apology, the Pope's Journey to Reconciliation (Hosted by Jack Beatty)
