Dear Readers:
The Divine Comedy is rooted in the ironical twists of history.
I grew up as Hitler's bombs shook the house and killed my neighbors, yet as I retire after 43 years in Catholic journalism, a former member of the Hitler Youth is pope.
In his predecessor I saw a brilliant autodidact, an intellectual who never went to a formal seminary. Basically self-taught, Karol Wojtyla rose above two brands of totalitarianism to become pope, yet he took on the coloration of ...