Moments — Private and Public — With the Pope

George Weigel was given unprecedented access to Pope John Paul II while he prepared his biography.

But after 1999’s Witness to Hope was on the bookshelves, he found that the Pope had moved him in a far deeper way than merely as the subject of research for a book. He spoke with Father Raymond J. de Souza for the Register.
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Many people expect that John Paul II will be declared a saint within 10 or 15 years. If that happens, what should he be the patron saint of?

Intellectuals, because he demonstrated what many deemed impossible: that it was possible to take both the great tradition of Christianity and the intellectual passions of modernity seriously.

In doing that, he embodied an image that I think was first proposed by Father Richard Neuhaus: a Church opening its windows to the modern world, certainly, but also a Church challenging the modern world to open its windows to the worlds of which it is part, including preeminently the world of transcendent Truth and Love.

This is another good article in the National Catholic Register.