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Wall Street Journal ANNE APPLEBAUM The Washington Post April 7, 2005
We keep hearing that the late Pope John Paul II helped “defeat” communism. Most descriptions of the pope’s role in the collapse of communism are vague and there is much confusion. An acquaintance fielded a reporter’s call about how the pope secretly negotiated the end of communism with Mikhail Gorbachev. The pope’s actual role in the end of the communist regime was far less conspiratorial, but no less significant.
In essence, the pope made two contributions to the defeat of totalitarian communism, a system in which the state both claimed ownership of all or most physical property and also held a monopoly on intellectual life. No one was allowed to own a private business, and no one was allowed to express belief in any philosophy besides Marxism. The church, first in Poland and then elsewhere, broke both monopolies, physically offering people a safe place to meet and intellectually offering an alternative way of thinking about the world.
