From Steven Hayward in The Weekly Standard:

If, the day after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, you had offered the prediction that not only would Reagan set us down the road to ending the Cold War, but the final leader of our dangerous foe would pay tribute to Reagan at his passing, your listeners would have looked nervously for men in white coats to intervene. The scene of Gorbachev and Thatcher together saluting Reagan almost demands speculation about Providence, if not divine intervention; only the absence of Pope John Paul II–protocol and ill health prevented his attendance–kept the thought from becoming obvious. The story of the end of the Cold War, surely one of the most momentous and consequential in all human history, continues to grow as more details emerge from the archives, and we have yet to grasp it from certain angles. There are shelves of books about the “Big Three” of World War II–Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin–but so far very little has been written directly about the triad of Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II, partly because the pope’s indirect political role does not fit easily into the conventions of political biography. Here, for the first time, John O’Sullivan pulls together the important threads from all three figures. He is the ideal person to tell this story, having lived in Washington for much of Reagan’s first term in office, serving as an aide and speechwriter to Thatcher, and all the while worshiping in the Roman Catholic Church. It is this last fact–O’Sullivan’s own faith–that is decisive in the genius of this book, as he appreciates both the political and theological subtleties of John Paul that are lost on most political writers, as well as the role of faith for both Reagan and Thatcher.

Steve is writing about John’s The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World. John talks more about it here.