informative book - Rated 
this book a follow up to his book in gods name which was not only informative but riviting for me a catholic covers so much detail of john paul ii s life.awonderful spiritual man that he was it is obvious that he got carried away with the position he held believing himself to be permenantly infallable which he was not. his contribution in poland and south american countries was weak and unsupportive of the people and his dealing with the sex scandles so bad also his supporting of bishop marcincus in vatican bank scandles his cover up of pope john paul i,s death facts.His refusal to enact great wide sweeping reforms already in the vatican pipeline on his electionleaves a lot to be desired.a good read denied by the vatican but no facts to refute his. buy both books read them with an honest open mind and really enjoy the experience.....johnd.
The REAL truth about the ' Man from a Far Country' - Rated
This book is beyond praise and written in a flowing lucid style, even though full of facts and names.Yet again Yallop has done a great service to the ordinary man and woman in the world (I mean both Catholics and people of other faiths)by exposing what is surely, from his detailed research and naming of persons concerned, the truth about the self-serving, money grabbing, self-satisfied hierarchy in the Vatican.
I am not a Catholic but Church of England and, as such, have always been willing to respect the views and faith of others and had hoped that when Pope John Paul 2 was elected he would help to unite the various factions and differing religious faiths - some vain hope, eh?
He absolutely ignored anything that really mattered, unless, of course it happened to chime with his moribund, narrow-minded beliefs, particularly in the area of human sexual needs.
I believe that Yallop is quite right in his main conclusion that this Pope did an excellent job in alienating many of the faithful, quite contrary to what he himself believed or SAID he believed. He, actually, right up until the end of his life, believed that the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults by various ranks of the Church was an 'American Problem' Very strange this, as why then is the Vatican still making payments all over the world to some of these people?
This man with, apparently, such a towering intellect never saw very much further than the end of his nose or, maybe, didn't want to; he was presumably more interested in charisma and glamour as he constantly toured the world.
What an indictment on the Catholic Church and such a terrible blow to those who are sincere and Godly believers. I must say that I am not very surprised and, it does strike me as VERY odd that his successor is one of his best friends, who, incidentally, at his election was three years over the age of clerical retirement!!??
Interesting insights - Rated
This book is undoubtedly an eye opener, and the amount of investigation and detailed evidence that Yallop proffers is astounding. As one of the apparently dying breed of British practising Catholics I was intrigued to read the book. I expected the 'anti-papist' sentiment one often gets in this sort of 'expose' book but in the circumstances I think the author made a good stab of simply offering the evidence (much of which was, sadly for me, damning)and allowing the reader to decide. There are without doubt huge issues of corruption and abuse within the church. I hope that books like this can shame the powers in the church into reverting to the Catholic Church's original ethos of caring and loving rather than allowing much of this nonsense to carry on. Well done the author.
The Power & The Glory: The Dark Side of The Wojtyla Pontificate - Rated
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.
Fantastic Insight on the Vatican - Rated
Absolutely brilliant book covering the "reign" of Pope John Paul II and his high handed authoritarian style. Why we should be surprised I don't know but it is still shocking to read of the corruption that is rife in this appalling organisation. Child abuse, money laundering, the Mafia, political interference, cover ups, downright lying, Nazi collaboration etc etc. There are some marvellous passages about the Churches attitude to wealth and how it's fine for them to be loaded at the expense of the congregations. Tony Blair has recently converted. Cormack Murphy O'Connor was the master of ceremonies for the event. I wonder if TB has read the sections about the paedophile cover ups? Highly recommended.
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