[Mannaggia l'America]

Most interesting was the supposition that Casey, a strong Catholic, made a number of trips to meet with the Pope who added his own bit of pressure from his position to help keep the Russian client-states in turmoil...sounds like something from one of his novels, but he says it was for real......

Carl Bernstein reported on this several years ago in Holy Alliance. Take a look at it - a very interesting read.

One paragraph from this article:

The key Administration players were all devout Roman Catholics--CIA chief William Casey, Allen, Clark, Haig, Walters and William Wilson, Reagan's first ambassador to the Vatican. They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship as a holy alliance: the moral force of the Pope and the teachings of their church combined with their fierce anticommunism and their notion of American democracy. Yet the mission would have been impossible without the full support of Reagan, who believed fervently in both the benefits and the practical applications of Washington's relationship with the Vatican. One of his earliest goals as President, Reagan says, was to recognize the Vatican as a state "and make them an ally."

[Intolerant in NJ]

One of his earliest goals as President, Reagan says, was to recognize the Vatican as a state "and make them an ally."...very interesting info - it had never quite sunk into my thick skull before that, while Reagan and the Pope were clearly working along the same paths toward the same goals, they were in effect in cahoots as they went - certainly helps put the lie to the infuriating nonsense I keep hearing from the lefties on the tube today that Reagan was passively, merely "fortunate to be in office when the USSR collapsed".....