My reasons for paying attention to the man are many. He defected to the West in 1979, the highest ranking defector from the Soviet Bloc ever. Interesting memories this man has...The Secret Roots of Liberation Theology.
Murder in the Vatican: The CIA and the Bolshevik Pontiff, about John Paul I, who was Pope for only a month, is an interesting read. The basic theme of the book is that the CIA etc. killed John Paul I,which is a very bad things, but yes, John Paul I was a Bolshevik plant from the moment he entered seminary. His mother was a devout Catholic, while his father was a Red. His father convinced him to burrow from within. It is implied that the Reds paid for his initial time in the seminary.
How much of the book is fiction, I have no idea. There is a scene where JPI as a young seminarian has a Russian for a roommate in the 1920s. The Russian points out that while there were hordes of homeless children/orphans in Italy, in the Soviet Union there were no homeless children. Which either the author and or the future Pope accept as fact. Whereas today it is very easy to find out that in the Soviet Union of that time there were quite a few homeless children, the consequence of the millions of adults who lost their lives in the Civil War and in the famine in the early 1920s.
I read enough of the book to conclude that if yes, he was a Bolshevik plant, then killing him wasn't necessarily such a bad thing. Which is not what the author wanted me to conclude.
Murder in the Vatican: The CIA and the Bolshevik Pontiff, about John Paul I, who was Pope for only a month, is an interesting read. The basic theme of the book is that the CIA etc. killed John Paul I,which is a very bad things, but yes, John Paul I was a Bolshevik plant from the moment he entered seminary. His mother was a devout Catholic, while his father was a Red. His father convinced him to burrow from within. It is implied that the Reds paid for his initial time in the seminary.
ReplyDeleteHow much of the book is fiction, I have no idea. There is a scene where JPI as a young seminarian has a Russian for a roommate in the 1920s. The Russian points out that while there were hordes of homeless children/orphans in Italy, in the Soviet Union there were no homeless children. Which either the author and or the future Pope accept as fact. Whereas today it is very easy to find out that in the Soviet Union of that time there were quite a few homeless children, the consequence of the millions of adults who lost their lives in the Civil War and in the famine in the early 1920s.
I read enough of the book to conclude that if yes, he was a Bolshevik plant, then killing him wasn't necessarily such a bad thing. Which is not what the author wanted me to conclude.