A Pope and a President

A Singular Bond That Changed History Even as historians credit Ronald Reagan and Pope John PaulII with hastening the end of the Cold War, they have failed to recognize the depth or significance of the bond that developed between the two leaders. Acclaimed scholar and bestselling author Paul Kengor changes that. In this fascinating book, he reveals a singular bondwhich included a spiritual connection between the Catholic pope and the Protestant presidentthat drove the two men to confront what they knew to be the great evil of the twentieth century: Soviet communism. Reagan and John PaulII almost didn't have the opportunity to forge this relationship: just six weeks apart in the spring of 1981, they took bullets from would-be assassins. But their strikingly similar near-death experiences brought them close togetherto Moscow's dismay.A Pope and a Presidentis the product of years of research. Based on Kengor's tireless archival digging and his unique access to Reagan insiders, the book reveals: The inside story on the 1982 meeting where the president and the pope confided their conviction that God had spared their lives for the purpose of defeating communismCaptivating new information on the attempt on John PaulII's life, including a previously unreported secret CIA investigationwas Moscow behind the plot?The many similarities and the spiritual bond between the pope and the presidentand how Reagan privately spoke of the ';DP': the Divine Plan to take down communismNew details about how the Protestant Reagan became intensely interested in the ';secrets of Ftima,' which date to the reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Ftima, Portugal, starting on May13, 1917sixty-four years to the day before John PaulII was shotA startling insider account of how the USSR may have been set to invade the pope's native Poland in March 1981only to pull back when news broke that Reagan had been shotNancy Reagan called John PaulII her husband's ';closest friend'; Reagan himself told Polish visitors that the pope was his ';best friend.' When you read this book, you will understand why. As kindred spirits, Ronald Reagan and John PaulII united in pursuit of a supreme objectiveand in doing so they changed history.