The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War

Just six weeks apart in the spring of 1981, Pope John Paul II and President ­Ronald Reagan took bullets from would-be assassins.

Few realized at the time how close both men came to dying.

Surviving these near-death experiences created a singular bond between the pope and the president that ­historians have failed to appreciate.

When John Paul II and Reagan met only a year later, they confided to each other a shared conviction: that God had spared their lives for a ­reason. That reason? To defe...