sixty-first birthday (May 22, 1981), Reagan sent Congressman Peter Rodino to Rome with a personal letter for John Paul, who was still hospitalized after the attempt on his life. Having also been shot in the chest in an assassination attempt on March 30, Reagan wrote, “The qualities you exemplify remain a precious asset as we confront the growing dangers of the moment.”
“On December 12–13, 1981, the Communist government of Poland arrested thousands of Solidarity activists. Over the next weeks the White House and the Vatican consulted closely on the events in Poland by telephone, cable, and through diplomatic representatives….
“The United States will not let the Soviet Union dictate Poland’s future with impunity,” Reagan wrote the Pope on December 29, 1981. “I am announcing today additional American measures aimed at raising the cost to the Russians of their continued violence against Poland.”
“A week later,” Ambassador Wilson was handed a letter from John Paul II to Reagan “pledging support for the U.S. sanctions. Though John Paul worried about the impact of sanctions on the Polish people, he said that he would stand with Reagan, even if he could not say so publicly.”
A cable to Haig said, “The Vatican recognizes that the U.S. is a great power with global responsibilities. The United States must operate on the political plane and the Holy See does not comment on the political positions taken by governments. It is for each government to decide its political policies. The Holy See for its part operates on the moral plane, [but] both the Holy See and the United States have the same objective: the restoration of liberty to Poland.”
On June 7, 1982, President Reagan arrived at the Vatican to meet with John Paul. Reporter and author Carl Bernstein wrote, “It was the first time the two had met, and they talked for fifty minutes. In the same wing of the papal apartments, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli and Archbishop Achille Silvestrini met with Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Judge William Clark, Reagan’s National Security Adviser.”
In that meeting in the Pope’s private library, Reagan and John Paul II agreed to undertake a secret campaign for the dissolution of the Communist empire.
Said Richard Allen, Reagan’s first National Security Adviser, “This was one of the great secret alliances of all time.”
According to aides who shared their leaders’ view of the world, Bernstein noted, Reagan and John Paul II “refused to accept a fundamental political fact of their lifetimes—the division of Europe as mandated at the Yalta [a conference in 1945] and the Communist dominance of Eastern Europe. A free Poland…would be a dagger to the heart of the Soviet empire.” If Poland became democratic, other East European states would follow. This secret Vatican meeting cemented the foundation for an outright war with Soviet Communism, with the USA and the Holy See as allies.
On January 10, 1984, the Reagan administration established full diplomatic relations with the Vatican, ending more than a century of official separation, but often secret contacts, between the White House and Vatican.
History has recorded that the friendship between the Pope and the president that Richard Allen called “one of the great secret alliances of all time,” sealed with a handshake in the Vatican, resulted in the liberation of Poland, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the demise of Communism in Europe, and the end of the Cold War.
CHAPTER 8
Opus Dei: The Pope’s Cult
T he vast majority of Americans, and many, if not most, Roman Catholics in the United States never heard of Opus Dei before the publication of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code or until the film version opened in theaters from coast to coast. The sensational book and movie introduced Opus Dei in the form of an albino priest committing a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
At the zenith of The Da Vinci
“On December 12–13, 1981, the Communist government of Poland arrested thousands of Solidarity activists. Over the next weeks the White House and the Vatican consulted closely on the events in Poland by telephone, cable, and through diplomatic representatives….
“The United States will not let the Soviet Union dictate Poland’s future with impunity,” Reagan wrote the Pope on December 29, 1981. “I am announcing today additional American measures aimed at raising the cost to the Russians of their continued violence against Poland.”
“A week later,” Ambassador Wilson was handed a letter from John Paul II to Reagan “pledging support for the U.S. sanctions. Though John Paul worried about the impact of sanctions on the Polish people, he said that he would stand with Reagan, even if he could not say so publicly.”
A cable to Haig said, “The Vatican recognizes that the U.S. is a great power with global responsibilities. The United States must operate on the political plane and the Holy See does not comment on the political positions taken by governments. It is for each government to decide its political policies. The Holy See for its part operates on the moral plane, [but] both the Holy See and the United States have the same objective: the restoration of liberty to Poland.”
On June 7, 1982, President Reagan arrived at the Vatican to meet with John Paul. Reporter and author Carl Bernstein wrote, “It was the first time the two had met, and they talked for fifty minutes. In the same wing of the papal apartments, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli and Archbishop Achille Silvestrini met with Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Judge William Clark, Reagan’s National Security Adviser.”
In that meeting in the Pope’s private library, Reagan and John Paul II agreed to undertake a secret campaign for the dissolution of the Communist empire.
Said Richard Allen, Reagan’s first National Security Adviser, “This was one of the great secret alliances of all time.”
According to aides who shared their leaders’ view of the world, Bernstein noted, Reagan and John Paul II “refused to accept a fundamental political fact of their lifetimes—the division of Europe as mandated at the Yalta [a conference in 1945] and the Communist dominance of Eastern Europe. A free Poland…would be a dagger to the heart of the Soviet empire.” If Poland became democratic, other East European states would follow. This secret Vatican meeting cemented the foundation for an outright war with Soviet Communism, with the USA and the Holy See as allies.
On January 10, 1984, the Reagan administration established full diplomatic relations with the Vatican, ending more than a century of official separation, but often secret contacts, between the White House and Vatican.
History has recorded that the friendship between the Pope and the president that Richard Allen called “one of the great secret alliances of all time,” sealed with a handshake in the Vatican, resulted in the liberation of Poland, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the demise of Communism in Europe, and the end of the Cold War.
CHAPTER 8
Opus Dei: The Pope’s Cult
T he vast majority of Americans, and many, if not most, Roman Catholics in the United States never heard of Opus Dei before the publication of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code or until the film version opened in theaters from coast to coast. The sensational book and movie introduced Opus Dei in the form of an albino priest committing a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
At the zenith of The Da Vinci
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