Cuban President Fidel Castro used the Jan. 21–25 papal visit to burnish his self-image as champion of the wretched of the earth, welcoming Pope John Paul II in a speech laced with anti-imperialist rhetoric and stock Marxist critiques of the Catholic Church.
Pope John Paul II was a priest with a poet’s soul. True, some of his predecessors wrote poems and plays. The verses of Damasus (366-384) are inscribed on the walls of the catacombs. Before Pius II (1458-1464) became a priest, he was court poet to Emperor Frederick III, writing everything from erotic love lyrics to a Latin verse comedy. Only…