A Shepherd and A statesman

COVER STORY: He challenged and endured Nazi and Communist tyrannies. He helped institute reforms that opened the Bible to millions of Catholics. He stood fast for traditional morality in an age of relativism. Last week, with his health in serious decline, millions used the occasion of his 25th anniversary as pope to remember (and say farewell to) Pope John Paul II, man of courage and man of conviction | Edward E. Plowman

Zenon Kiszko's name or the role he played in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe probably won't make it into any history books. Mr. Kiszko, the Communist Party's No. 2 man in Poland and "speaker" of the nominal parliament, certainly didn't know he was playing such a role in late 1962 and early 1963, but he was.

Mr. Kiszko held veto power over key church appointments. He already had nixed at least six of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski's nominees to fill the important See of Krakow in southern Poland. In what has to be one of history's most monumental miscalculations, Mr. Kiszko schemed instead to have a young bishop named Karol Wojtyla [voh-TILL-ah] selected as Krakow's archbishop. Party leaders apparently thought the intellectual cleric was someone who wouldn't rock the boat.