The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of Pope John Paul II's Vatican (Hardcover)

~ David Yallop (Author) "'When one pope dies, we make another one.'..." (more)
Key Phrases: clerical sexual abuse, paedophile priests, papal tour, Catholic Church, United States, Karol Wojtyla (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pope John Paul II was one of the most visible and influential figures of the late 20th century. He is credited with helping bring down communism, for popularizing the Solidarity movement in Poland and for advancing the devotion of the Virgin Mary, who he claimed interceded to save him from an assassination attempt in the early 1980s. According to investigative journalist Yallop, this is hardly the whole story about the late pontiff. Yallop paints a portrait of a pope who centralized authority as much as possible, quashed any sign of disobedience or rebellion within the Catholic Church and, while lambasting Catholics for getting involved in politics, was just as much a political figure as a religious one. The author seems to enjoy shooting holes in John Paul II's character, tarnishing many of the embellished stories that the pope's fans hold dear. Yallop has done exhaustive research for this project, but his journalistic objectivity is sometimes placed aside—clearly no fan of John Paul II, he posits quasiconspiracy theories about Vatican coverups and behind-the-scenes backstabbing. Still, the book also offers useful information that brings out the complex realities of the Catholic hierarchy and the papacy's role in world affairs. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

From the first moment of his papacy Karol Wojtyla sought political influence and a role on the world stage. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, he was a leader to millions of Catholics at a time of tremendous change. Promising a renewed church, he was the first media Pope and travelled around the world to preach his message. It is said that he was central in the fall of Soviet Eastern Europe, in particular his own homeland of Poland. Now, one year after his death, there are already calls for his sainthood. But is this the whole truth? David Yallop explores the myths and half truths of John Paul II's long reign and asks some difficult questions ranging from the role of the Vatican in the momentous events in 1989, and the continued mismanagement of Vatican finance which allowed Calvi and others to continue to use the Vatican banks for money laundering to the failure to address the child sexual abuse crisis and the rise of the Opus Dei. Including explosive revelations from the CIA, the KGB, and the Vatican itself, it is a bold and unflinching look at a man who soon stands to become a saint.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (March 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786719567
• ISBN-13: 978-0786719563
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #563,274 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #87 in

  Books > History > Europe > Vatican

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Power & The Glory: The Dark Side of The Wojtyla Pontificate, February 2, 2008

By	William Courson "William Courson" (Montclair, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of Pope John Paul II's Vatican (Hardcover)

The Power & The Glory: The Dark Side of The Wojtyla Pontificate
Reviewed by William Courson

Karol Wojtyla, who was to become known to the world as Pope John Paul II, is one of the most influential and even beloved figures of the 20th century, credited with speeding the demise of Eastern European and Soviet Communism and for speaking out for the human rights and dignity of the disenfranchised, the poor, and the powerless.

From the moment of his election to the papacy, Karol Wojtyla sought political influence and a role on the world stage. At the close of the twentieth and dawn of the twenty-first century, he was a leader to millions of Catholics at a time of tremendous social change and religious upheaval. Promising a renewed church, he was the first "media pope" and crossed the globe many times to preach his message. Now, but two years after his death, there are calls for his canonization as a saint and for the award of the appellation "John Paul the Great."

According to the author of "The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of Pope John Paul II's Vatican," this widely-held view of a heroic and principled leader is but the officially promulgated tip of an iceberg whose submarine mass is one composed of tolerance (at a minimum) of criminality, friendly cooperation with some of the most nefarious political regimes and corrupt commercial empires on the face of the earth, and brutal (and that is not too strong a word) indifference to the needs and aspirations of Catholic clergy and laity. This is a stunning and sobering chronicle of a man wholly dedicated to advancing without regard to human cost the conservative agenda of the most retrograde and plutocratic elements within the Roman Catholic Church.

Investigative journalist David Yallop, who also authored "In God's Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I" paints a convincing and extraordinarily well-documented portrait of a man who seized the reigns of papal authority with the aim of quashing any and all dissent within the Catholic Church and preserving at all costs that Church's - often illicitly gained - patrimony, whilst installing a dictatorial climate of fear and self-censorship in the labyrinthine bureaus of the Holy See.

Wojtyla's blatent cover-up of pedophile priests and bishops, his policies promoting economic and social disparities, his suppression of the popular uprisings of the poor in Latin America, his ban on contraception which drove poverty and disease in third world countries and - what may have been Wojtyla's mortal sin - his clearly demonstrable knowledge of if not involvement in the conspiracy that led to the death of his predecessor - are all brought out of the silent, malarial fog that envelopes the inner workings of the Vatican.

David Yallop does not traffic in circumstantial "evidence" and hypothetical constructs of what may have happened or could have happened or probably did happen. He confines himself to demonstrable facts of probative value. `He ably documents the other half of Karol Wojtyla's career before and after his ascent to the Throne of Peter which has never been publicized.

There are uncounted `biographies' in print of Karol Wojtyla that are nothing apart from (more or less officially sanctioned) hagiographies that demonstrate only Wojtyla's `great' side. In fact, almost all of them embellish his sanctified image by relating accounts of events that never happened or sanitizing those that did in such a way as to make the man appear in a near-Divine light.

"The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of Pope John Paul II's Vatican," properly balances Karol Wojtyla's world-changing achievements against his misjudgments (such as his obsessive silencing of critics) and his misdeeds (such as his glacial reaction to the clerical child abuse scandals at a time when he was obsessively concerned with the sexual practices of the laity).

At the end of the day, the objective reader is forced to ask himself this question: could the unfortunate events and processes that are described in detail in this work have transpired without Karol Wojtyla's knowledge, acquiescence and complicity? And the objective reader is forced to conclude, tragically, that the answer is 'no.'

When a sufficient time has elapsed so as to allow an unemotional, rationally objective assessment of the pontificate of John Paul II to take place, David Yallop will surely be seen not as an investigative journalist but as an historian, and this critical and invaluable book as a work of historic import.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exploding the mythology of John Paul II, September 27, 2009

By	Thomas Patrick Doyle "Thomas P Doyle" (Vienna, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of Pope John Paul II's Vatican (Paperback)

After reading the first chapter of this momentous, and at times shocking book, one concludes that not only few papacies, but few popes have been surrounded by as much myth and misconception as Karol Wojtyla, priest, bishop, cardinal, pope and in the opinion of many, saint.

The author combines the ability to write in a clear, easy-to-follow style with formidable research capability. His other works include In God's Name, Unholy Alliance, Tracking the Jackal and Deliver Us From Evil.

Even John Paul's most ardent supporters would have to agree that his papacy not without controversy. In spite of the "super pope" media image, critical studies of his papacy and his theology have emerged. Nothing however, comes close to the detailed examination provided by David Yallop. The author's widely acknowledged investigative skills are at their best in his fearless quest to discover the real Karl Wojtyla. He devoted eight years to research, probing deeply into the reality of the man and the papacy that dominated the Catholic Church for a quarter century.

This book will shock and enrage the ardent supporters of the late pope yet one must honestly ask if the adulation is for the carefully crafted larger than life image or for the man himself. Yallop's detailed study of John Paul II's personal and public life leave no other conclusion than that the adoring faithful were really enamored of an image and not reality.

Even critics of John Paul's reign, characterized by some as "autocratic" and "restorationist" will be uncomfortably surprised at Yallop's well researched and solidly supported de-mythologization of Karol Wojtyla's early years in Poland, first under Nazi and later under Communist occupation. He flattens the notion, created by Vatican spin meisters, that young Karol was an active partisan committed to protecting Jews from the Nazis. Not true, according to Yallop's research. Instead, the future pope "actively attempted to persuade others to abandon violent resistance and trust in the power of prayer." (P. 239). The author interviewed several Jewish authorities who said straight out that there are no records of Wojtyla doing anything to protect or save Jews during World War II.

Yallop puts the pope's role in the dismantling of the Soviet Union in a dim light, portraying him as highly cautious and retreating to reliance on prayer rather than decisive action. If one takes this rendition of the late pope's non-role in the demolition of Communism and mixes it with his tacit approval of military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile and El Salvador plus his negative reaction to liberation theology, one wonders at the veracity of the claims that he was a world class human rights advocate.

With bold clarity Yallop delves into the two explosive Vatican financial scandals, the so-called Banco Ambrosiano debacle and the Martin Frankel insurance fraud of the 90's. The theme throughout, which puts the pope in the middle of it all, is that money has a powerful way of blurring the line between integrity and greed for the denizens of the Vatican.

He does an exceptionally credible job on the clergy abuse scandal, now in its third decade. A burning question: "why has the Pope done nothing to stop it?" is valid since the Pope knew the details from the outset of the first U.S. revelations in 1984. Yet he said nothing publicly until 1993. His theme then and throughout: clergy abuse is evil, the priest-abusers are sinners, the poor suffering bishops had to put up with it and the victims need prayer. In 1994 the papal spin doctor, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said it was primarily an American problem and then parroted the papal line that western secularism, materialism and sensationalism had a lot to do with exaggerating it. Within a year Cardinal Groer, Archbishop of Vienna, was exposed as a sexual abuser from his pre-cardinal days. The pope had appointed Groer from nowhere in 1986, largely because of his promotion of Marian devotion. He did nothing when the scandal first broke, and, according to Yallop's research, was outraged at the Austrian bishops for failing to keep the lid on the terrible publicity. In spite of it all the proof was conclusive and Groer was not only forced to resign but ordered not to perform any public functions as a cardinal or bishop.

Yallop's rendition of the sex abuse saga is not only factually correct but his reasons as to why the pope remained impotent are on target. He best sums it up on the papal silence: "He brought with him... to the Vatican practices that he had embraced throughout his life as a priest. They included an intense pathological hatred of any revelation that indicated the Catholic Church was not a perfect institution.. All dissent must be kept behind closed doors, whether of church politics, scandalous behavior or criminal activity." (P. 314). The late pope appears to have sacrificed open advocacy for victimized children in favor of tacit protection of the structure. He refused to ever meet with victims and never even uttered a publicly apology. His most egregious response to the scandal was the much-publicized short-circuiting of the canonical investigation of the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel-Degollado. That, plus the rehabilitation of Bernard Law by making him Archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica convinced abuse victims that the pope cared little for them and much for the Church's hierarchical aristocracy. Yallop's description of the facts confirms this conviction.

The Power and the Glory had to be written because the Church and contemporary culture sorely need a reality check on out of control hagiographic forces that threaten to seriously distort a vitally important chapter of modern-day history. It had to be written for the good of the Church as well. John Paul II was well on the way to becoming a cult figure....far removed the role of pope as pastoral father and not supreme emperor. "His obituaries abound with myths, fantasies and dis-information" says Yallop. "The cult of personality which John Paul so reveled in focuses precisely on the man but at great cost to the faith."

This book is more than a critical biography. It is about the thinly veiled political aspect of the Church that has confused earthly power with the propagation of the Word. It is about the actions, inactions and questionable responses of the late pope and the Vatican he created to internal scandals and socio-cultural turbulence in ecclesiastical and secular society. Finally, it is about a model of "Church" that has grown increasingly at odds with the vision of Vatican II or perhaps worse, it is about a model of "Church" that has always been there, though in recent times lurking in the shadows, waiting to be once more empowered.

14 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Author Makes an Excellent Devil's Advocate, August 21, 2007

By	John Sparks "Neither a prophet nor a prophet'... (Hager Hill, KY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I notice that, in all the reviews of this book preceding this one, it's either been given five stars or one--no in-between opinions, it seems. Then again, I suppose that any biography of a Pope, or any other well-known and controversial religious figure, is bound to elicit responses of this sort. After having read this book, I can easily see why it could be classified as a polemical work with negative criticisms going somewhat to extremes; but then again, it wasn't David Yallop who abolished the position of "Devil's Advocate" in the Roman Catholic Church's process of beatification and elevation to sainthood, it was John Paul II himself. Popular pressure no doubt will influence some later Pope, whether Benedict XVI or a subsequent one, to canonize John Paul II, but it is still necessary to remember that Karol Wojtyla was human and, like the rest of us, a slave to some aspects of his upbringing. The facts that he was guilty of an autocratic management style and was inconsistent in his policies towards repressive governments, depending on their location and the ideologies of the tyrants in power over them, were well known before Yallop articulated them--as was the Church's inexcusable sheltering of Cardinal Law in the wake of the sexual-abuse scandal.

I gave this work four stars rather than five because of a few instances of typographical errors and slapdash copyediting. Without the presence of those, I would have given it five stars. Love the book, hate it, but let it stand as the Devil's Advocate that no one now in the Church will ever permit to question John Paul II's eligibility for sainthood.