The Pope in Poland: The Pilgrimages of John Paul II, 1979–1991. By James Ramon Felak.

Abstract

On April 2, 2005, Pope John Paul II passed from this world to the next. His funeral at Vatican City was attended by a host of political and religious leaders—many of whom were, like John Paul himself, central figures of the post-Cold War world and the late twentieth century. Attendees included George H.W. Bush, a World War II veteran, who has been called the last of the old school “WASP” American presidents; his son, George W. Bush, the then-president who represented the watershed of power of both the neoconservative as well as the evangelical movements; William Jefferson Clinton, who, prior to Barack Obama, was the quintessential New Left Baby Boomer president; as well as a host of other figures, such as Tony and Cherie Blair, who in various ways represented iterations of the American Century that was only then slowly coming to its end in the first decade of the...