All of these developments were keenly monitored in Washington by Reagan, who moved into the White House in January 1981 and remained enthralled by the unfolding drama. In their papal biography, author Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame and Vatican reporter Marco Politi chronicle a close relationship between the two leaders that they contend was directed at undermining the Communist empire. By the authors' account, the presidential-papal relationship began with an exchange of letters soon after Reagan took office, followed by regular secret visits to the Vatican by Ambassador-at-Large Vernon Walters and CIA Director William Casey, both staunch Catholics. They assured the pope of financial, material, and political support to keep Solidarity alive, and they provided him with a trove of top-flight intelligence about developments in Poland and other countries the pope was to visit in his extensive travels. In February of 1981 as Polish unrest mounted, that intelligence stream reportedly included satellite photographs of Soviet-armed forces massing at the Polish border. Soon after, there were widespread reports that the pope, in a letter to Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, had threatened to fly to Warsaw and stand in front of Red Army tanks if they invaded. In the Kremlin, the mood was one of nervous consternation. An independent trade union asserting its freedom and operating unchallenged in a satellite nation could not be allowed. In December 1981, Polish leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski presumably acted on Moscow's orders and declared martial law. Thousands of Solidarity members were arrested, hundreds were charged with treason and subversion, the union was banned, and Walesa was arrested. As Polish forces took over the streets, thousands of Solidarity activists went into hiding, many sheltered by the church.
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Our photo gallery spans the pope's youth to his last days at the vatican.
Six months later, in June of 1982, President Reagan traveled to the Vatican for a private meeting with the pope. They shared a common bond: Each had survived assassination attempts just six weeks apart, and each believed that God had spared him for an important future role, perhaps contributing to the downfall of a system each despised. "The Reagan-Wojtyla summit cemented an understanding that each man would use the enormous power at his command to bring about . . . a fundamental change they both believe was intended by God: The eclipse of communism by Christian ideals," write Bernstein and Politi. Reagan adviser Richard Allen believes the two leaders felt the collapse of the Soviet empire was inevitable, though more for spiritual than for strategic reasons. The two leaders, he says, shared a vision that right would ultimately prevail in some divinely inspired plan, and the president held a deep and steadfast conviction that this pope would help change the world. "This was one of the great secret alliances of all time, not an alliance in the formal sense but a de facto agreement," Allen explains. "We were working on separate tracks, but there was a confluence as the rivulets flowed into one big stream of resistance. We attempted to maintain the sanctity of the pope's spiritual agenda with its temporal outcome being the removal of the Communists in Poland."
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