Pope John Paul II was the featured topic last night in DiGiovanni Hall at St. Paul's Church as George Weigel promoted Witness to Hope, his recently published biography of the current head of the Catholic Church.

Standing before an audience of nearly 100 people, including many church officials, Weigel first described the interesting set of circumstances that preceded his work on the manuscript.

Weigel first suggested the idea of a biography to the Pope's spokesperson a number of years ago, and after "phone calls and faxes across the Atlantic," the Pope finally invited him to a dinner during which he approved the idea.

That was June of 1996, and Weigel has been working on the book full time since then.

"It's a big book," Weigel said, explaining why the biography took him three years to complete. "He's been a very busy guy for 79 years."

Weigel went on to address some of the book's more significant points, including John Paul II's role in the collapse of European communism.

"[Communism's collapse] was a result of the revolution of conscience that [the Pope] excited in Europe," Weigel said, referring in part to John Paul II's historic visit to Poland.

The audience also heard Weigel's perspective on the Pope's contributions to democracy, freedom, humanism and religious tolerance.

"This pope is a public moral reference book," Weigel said.

Weigel is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a non-governmental organization established in 1976 to study the connections between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and domestic and foreign policy issues.

During the question and answer session following the speech, one audience member asked what the Pope had accomplished in relations with China.

Weigel described failed attempts to curb China's human rights violations as the Pope's "single biggest public disappointment."

In fact, the biography includes a copy of a letter John Paul II wrote to Deng Xiaoping over a decade ago, a letter to which the Pope received no response.

Although, unfortunately, the letter bore no fruits for the Pope, it might do more for Weigel.

"I'm interested in what the letter to Deng says," said first-year law student Kevin C. Walsh. "I'm going to buy the book to find out."