John Paul the Great: A Pope Who Made History 2007
Distributed by Janson Media, 88 Semmons Road, Harrington Park, NJ 07640; 201-784-8488
Produced by Dian Dorahy, Javier Martinez-Brocal, and Susanna L. Pinto
Director n/a
DVD, color, 60 min.
Sr. High - Adult
History, Religious Studies
Date Entered: 12/04/2007
Reviewed by Alexander Rolfe, Technical Services Librarian, George Fox University, Newberg, ORThis paean to the late Pope John Paul II aired on ROMEreports in 2005. Intended for a Catholic audience, it differs from the news reports about the Pope in some interesting ways. We learn, for example, that the Pope and Our Lady of Fatima brought down communism, apparently on their own. (The Pope believed that surviving his 1981 assassination attempt was the work of Our Lady of Fatima who was preserving him to defeat communism, and that this was predicted in one of the Fatima prophecies.) Although this is not a critical portrait, it's quite good and very informative. One gets a sense for why Pope John Paul II was so popular, and we hear a lot from him and those who were close to him. The documentary begins with his birth, but the focus is on his papacy, particularly his presentation of the church to the world. There is almost no mention of his theological positions or his encyclicals. The documentary nonetheless succeeds in capturing his significance, and shows why he will probably be known as John Paul the Great.
The technical quality is high. A couple sentences of narration are unintentionally repeated at one point, but care was obviously taken to make this presentation really good.
Highly recommended.