The Divine Plan

John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War

By: Paul Kengor, Robert Orlando

Hardback Book: $27.95
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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 defeat Communism. In private, Reagan had a name for this: “The DP”—the Divine Plan.

In this riveting book, bestselling author Paul Kengor and writer-film director Robert Orlando show what it took to end the Cold War: leaders who refused to accept that hundreds of millions must suffer under totalitarian Communism. And no leaders proved more important than the pope and the president.

Two men who seemed to have little in common developed an extraordinary bond—including a spiritual bond between the Catholic pope and Protestant president. And their shared core convictions drove them to confront Communism.

To tell the full story of the dramatic closing act of the Cold War, Kengor and Orlando draw on their exhaustive research and exclusive interviews with numerous experts, including well-known historians Douglas Brinkley, H. W. Brands, Anne Applebaum, Stephen Kotkin, John O’Sullivan, and Craig Shirley; the leading biographer of John Paul II, George Weigel; close Reagan advisers Richard Allen and James Rosebush; and Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron.

You can’t understand Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan—or how the Cold War came to such a swift and peaceful end—without understanding how much faith they put in the “Divine Plan”.

“John Paul II and Ronald Reagan both understood that they were preserved through this suffering for a high purpose. And I don’t think you’ll understand either one of them without understanding that.”
—Bishop Robert Barron, Founder, Word on Fire

Author:

Paul Kengor

Paul Kengor is the acclaimed author of the best-selling books God and Ronald Reagan, God and George W. Bush, and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. He is a professor of Political Science at Grove City College, and is a frequent contributor to MSNBC, C-SPAN, NPR, FOX NEWS.

Robert Orlando

Robert Orlando is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. The founder of Nexus Media, he has been involved in the production, development, or release of more than a dozen film and documentary projects. Sony Pictures released his most recent documentary, Silence Patton. Orlando wrote and directed the companion documentary to be released in conjunction with The Divine Plan.

Coming Soon DVD

ABOUT THE FILM
THE DIVINE PLAN: REAGAN, JOHN PAUL II & The End of the Cold War/ A film by Robert Orlando It remains the least-known story of the twentieth century… A president and a pope; an unlikely pair who combine deep faith with political acumen and high-octane star power. A plot that involves two assassination attempts, KGB scheming, CIA intrigue and the final act to topple the Soviet Empire.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
This epic saga takes a writer-director with deep knowledge of religious and political history on a quest to tell this compelling true-life story.
Robert Orlando, whose credits include Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe and the recent Silence Patton: First Victim of the Cold War, takes viewers behind the scenes of a partnership that changed the world, asking daring questions … Was a pontiff and politician’s work overthrowing communism the result of inexorable political and economic forces, or could it have been part of what Reagan called, “The Divine Plan”?
Told in part as a graphic thriller this highly-stylized motion picture film pushes beyond the bounds of conventional documentary-making into a world where one’s belief might determine the facts.