Why are the stories of lives the way they are... I don’t know.
I’m a Crazy Evangelical of a Calvinut variety (well, “mild Calvinist”) and the way it is looking to me... yes, God could predestine us to get a Fidel Castro whose return to Christ would be one nanosecond before he died. God can get the timing as tight as He likes. Trying to see further into the situation, I don’t think I can, but could perhaps guess a few things. Why would such a soul be made the vessel of such evil before it was saved. This is one of those hypothetical questions that we’d be marveling in heaven about. I do know what engaging the salvation of Christ is like, and it turns our mortal categories quite inside out. It snatches things from the devil that he thought he had cemented down and iron clad. The very grace can drive us crazy because it could go to people whom the world never ever would wish heaven upon.
Of course the Pope is sad. He did not save this well known soul. Failure always makes people sad.