Bush and Blair have praised the Pope once he has died. But they were not ‘inspired’ by John Paul II when he was strongly opposing the invasion of Iraq.
Before being appointed Pope, Karol had opposed Communism and atheism in his native Poland, he also opposed Capitalism and its effects on the peoples in the exploited countries, but this is not mentioned by the western media which adopted the myth of ‘the end of History’: with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Empire of Evil (i.e. communism, because now we know that there is a new Evil) was defeated, we(?) live in the most beautiful of all gardens.
Also before he was appointed Pope, he was one of the most reactionary voices during the Vatican Council II. This Council introduced the notion of “responsible paternity”, but for many christians, the most important sign of the effects of this Council was the commitment to the “option for the poor”, most visible in certain parts of the Church especially in Latin America, where the Liberation Theology was developed. With John Paul II as its Pope, the Church punished those priests and teachers who were most radically committed to the oppressed, to social justice and change.
John Paul II was the pope who took the Church back to the political arena, claiming political and social power, destroying attempts of democratisation and decentralisation within the Church, and blatantly ignoring institutions that were set up as a result of the collaboration of priests and lay people in the spirit of Vatican Council II, especially in the process of appointing bishops.
