The visit to France by Pope Leo XIV was so stunningly successful and popular that it reminds me of the historic nine-day pilgrimage of Saint John Paul II to Poland between June 2 and 10 in 1979.
My wife Callista and I were so deeply moved by the impact of Saint John Paul II in his first visit home as a native son that we produced a movie, “Nine Days That Changed the World.”
The enormous emotional outburst of the Polish people over those days shook the Soviet empire and created real impetus for Solidarity as a union movement insisting on freedom. It was in many ways the beginning of the end for communist domination of Poland.
An estimated 3 million persons came to Victory Square at Warsaw and heard the pope invoke the Holy Spirit and pray: “Let your Spirit descend! And renew the face of the earth. The face of this land!” The world changed.
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