John Paul's biographer tells his story

In the run-up to the beatification of John Paul the Second, we are shining the spotlight more brightly than before on the incredible legacy of this polish-born pope, who during his long pontificate set record after record and made history time after time.

One person who became a personal friend of Pope John Paul and had numerous private interviews and meetings with him is U.S. Catholic Scholar George Weigel who wrote a best selling biography of the pope entitled "Witness to Hope" published in 1999. More than a decade later, Weigel wrote a sequel to that biography called “The End and the Beginning. Covering the last six years of the pope’s life, this book sheds new light on John Paul’s fight against communism and explores his vast legacy.

Weigel is one of the hundreds of thousands of people who will be attending John Paul's beatification ceremony in St Peter's Square on May 1st and Susy Hodges asked him to share with us his thoughts about this keenly awaited event.

He says of the beatification: "I think this is a moment where the official judgement of the leadership of the Catholic Church is confirming the judgement of the people of the Church which was registered at the pope's funeral in 2005, namely that this was a life of heroic virtue, this was a man who can and should be held up as an example.."

When it comes to Pope John Paul's place in the history books of the late 20th century, Weigel has no doubts about his vital role: "it's now being widely recognised that Pope John Paul was the pivotal figure in the collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe."

Weigel says on a spiritual level, Pope John Paul "made the Christian proposal interesting and dynamic in a world that had imagined that it had outgrown the need for religious faith of any sort and that's an extraordinary accomplishment." He also says his appeal stretched far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church: "I think his beatification is going to be an ecumenical and inter-religious affair, not simply a Catholic affair."

Listen to his interview with Susy Hodges: