Covering the Pope
An Interview with George Weigel
(Winter 2006 Newsletter)
George Weigel is a senior fellow at the Center for Ethics
and Public Policy and the author or editor of eighteen books,
including: The Courage to be Catholic: Letters to a Young
Catholic; and the definitive papal biography, Witness
to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II. His latest work,
entitled God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future
of the Catholic Church, has just been published by Harper
Collins. Mr. Weigel visited the College in October.
Q. How does one go about becoming the official biographer
of a pope?
A. I had been in conversation with John Paul II for three
or four years. I had been writing about him from virtually
the beginning of his pontificate. In 1995, it occurred to
me that it was ridiculous that there wasn’t a decent
book that was reliable in telling his remarkable story.
Q. Could you describe the timeline of the book?
A. I first proposed the idea to the Pope’s press secretary
around May of 1995. About six or seven months later, I was
at dinner with the Holy Father, and the topic of a biography
came up. He had apparently been aware of the conversation
from the previous months, and he indicated that he thought
it would be a good idea if I were to take it on. Three years
after that, I had a book.
Q. Could you characterize the cooperation you received
from the Pope and the Vatican as you did the research for
the book?
A. The Pope was tremendous in his cooperation. Some in the
Vatican and back in Poland were less forthcoming with me,
but for the most part I received invaluable amounts of help.
One of the most cooperative individuals was then-Cardinal
Ratzinger, whom I had known long before I had known John Paul
II.
Q. Did you learn anything about John Paul II that you
weren’t expecting?
A. Oh yes. I knew the War had been a crucial experience of
his life, but I didn’t know any of the details or the
depth of it. Also, I had not reckoned with how important his
father was. I think his father was one of the most important
influences in his life.
Q. Besides the obvious fact he was the first non-Italian
pontiff in over four hundred years, what other factors went
in to making John Paul II so extraordinary?
A. He was not in any way a vain man, but I think he knew what
he knew. And he knew in October 1978 [when he was elected]
that he knew how to be a bishop and that he was not going
to be repackaged or remade by the traditional managers of
the Pope. He was going to do this his way. And that included
this kind of enormous public witnessing of the Faith that
manifested itself in the Pope’s precedent-shattering
global pilgrimages.
Q. In your latest book, God’s Choice:
Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church,
you spend the first one hundred pages on the final days of
John Paul II. Why?
A. How would you describe the conclave to elect the new Pope
without describing the momentous history that led up to it?
It really was a seamless transition.
Q. Do you think John Paul II’s pontificate had
an impact on Catholic higher education?
A. Very much so. Actually, I am more optimistic about the
future of Catholic higher education in America than I was
ten or fifteen years ago.
Q. What makes you so optimistic?
A. I believe there are two important factors that color my
optimism. First, the Catholic deconstruction that took place
in this country in the 1960s and 1970s has turned out to be
rather sterile. Those who rejected Humanae Vitae didn’t
really replace themselves into the next generation. The second
major factor is that no one could have predicted the enormous
renaissance of young Catholic vitality under the impact of
John Paul II. If you put the two together, you begin to get
the kind of reform—genuine reform—that is pushing
the numbers back in the right direction.
Q. So there’s a future for Catholic higher education?
A. Absolutely. But we shouldn’t be satisfied with the
gains we’ve made so far. The goal of Catholic liberal
education is to educate young men and women who are going
to take responsibility for their own lives, their families,
the Church, and the country. The problems are still formidable,
but I think there has definitely been a turn.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2006
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