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What you posted doesn't bother me in the least, but then again, I tend to look at lavish praise of JPII for "bringing down the Iron Curtain" as a kind of folie a deux - long on heartfelt belief that something happened, short on specific acts of daring do or anything particularly brave.

As far as I can see, he went to Poland in 1979 - a whooptedoo event that any Pope could be expected to do. He went again in '87, another speaking event - but again, it wasn't like it would have been denied by his pals in the party apparatus in Warsaw or in Moscow.

He always did seem to get on well with them, never really making waves, but frequently criticising Western culture - and most specifically, Americans.

Liberation Theology

BILL BLAKEMORE: When the Pope went to Central America, we asked him on some of those trips, flying into these countries, "What about liberation theology?" And he'd get very stern, and he would say, "It depends on whose liberation theology. If we're talking about the liberation theology of Christ, not Marx, I am very much for it."

NARRATOR: In Poland the Pope fought communism with clarity and grace. But in Latin America he stumbled. In the 1980s the region was gripped by violent civil wars between despotic right-wing regimes and Marxist revolutionaries. Many Catholic priests caught up in the political struggle were apostles of a new "liberation theology." The Pope's repression of their movement revealed a rigid side of his character in this lush tropical landscape.

Rev. WILLIAM R. CALLAHAN, Writer: In the struggle between the Sandinistas and the church leadership in Nicaragua there were code words, and the Pope began the first 11 paragraphs of his talk with one of those sets of code words. "I say you must live in unity with your bishops." That's the same thing as saying "You must back off from the Sandinista revolution."

People that had the papal colors were shouting "Viva la Papa," and the others were shouting "Queremos la paz"- "We want peace." Finally- as this would swell up, finally the Pope said - what is the Spanish equivalent of "Shut up"? - "Silencio." Three times the chanting swelled, and three times the Pope told the people to keep quiet.

JOHN PAUL II: [subtitles] The Church is the first to want peace!

ROBERTO SURO: The man has a bit of a temper and does not brook a lot of impertinence. And he was clearly angry about this. When he came back to Rome, he said, "What the hell is going on in that country? Who are these people? And what kind of church is this?" And the prelates in Rome and the conservative hierarchy in Latin America said, "That's liberation theology. You just saw it."

Well, he saw one very particular, small strain of what was a continent-wide movement that had many, many manifestations. This set in motion a very deliberate strategy to crush liberation theology. [www.pbs.org: Read more of this interview]

ERIC MARGOLIS, "The Toronto Sun": He moved very quickly to close many institutions that had become hotbeds of liberation theology- seminaries, for example, schools, particular churches, things where there had become clusters of sort of Marxism within the church. These were closed. Their personnel were transferred to the Catholic versions of Devil's Island, to all kinds of remote places out of the region.

The Pope then moved in a whole new cadre of administrative and religious personnel to come in and replace these people. So he did a complete clean sweep of the system in Latin America and put his own men in who were responsive and answerable to the Pope. He just cleaned them out.

ROBERTO SURO, "The Washington Post": The subject was not open for discussion. It was not open for exploration. It was not a matter to be researched, debated. It was over.