John Paul II: A Personal Portrait of the Pope and the Man

As U.S. ambassador to the Vatican from 1993 to 1997, Flynn had the ultimate dream job for a politician who also happened to be a devout Catholic. Now, with the term of the president who appointed him at an end, he has parlayed his four-year assignment in Rome into a memoir. His ""Portrait of the Pope,"" written in collaboration with Moore, author of The French Connection, is largely a warm recollection of the special and intimate moments Flynn enjoyed in the presence of the pope. It begins in 1969 with their first meeting in Boston, long before the former Karol Wojtyla was elected pope, and ends late in Jubilee Year 2000 as Flynn visits Rome one last time. The book's most compelling narration is an account of the battle the pope waged in 1994 over the Clinton administration's efforts to advance its views on abortion at the United Nations Conference for Population and Development in Cairo. Flynn, a pro-life Democrat who agreed with the pope despite his ties to the president, writes candidly about the difficulty he experienced in fulfilling the pope's request to talk with Clinton before the conference. Although he is an unabashed admirer of the pontiff, Flynn also deals in the book with John Paul's increasing frailty and the discouragement the pope felt following the Cairo conference. For readers less inclined to tackle the more substantive papal biographies, Flynn's portrait provides a light alternative. (Apr.)