Diminished authority - Pope fails on the political stage

In 1935 Joseph Stalin is said to have asked contemptuously: “how many divisions has the pope?” The question was answered emphatically by John Paul II long after the Soviet dictator’s death when the Berlin Wall came crashing down and Eastern Europe emerged from behind the Iron Curtain.

John Paul was the most influential pope of the modern era and was not afraid to speak out on secular concerns when the occasion demanded it. At an open-air Mass in Drogheda on September 29, 1979, he made an appeal to the IRA and other paramilitaries: “On my knees I beg you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to the ways of peace.”