Possibly more important to the Catholicism of the twentieth century and to the relations of the Catholic Church to Christians of other communions are the persons of the late Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa. Before their sojourns were over, the joke was, the main thing, maybe the only thing, Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholics had in common was appreciation for the author and lay theologian C. S. Lewis. But John Paul and Mother Teresa are a level even higher, embodying holiness besides great wisdom and insight into the human spirit. Billy Graham calls the late Pope “unquestionably the most influential voice for morality and peace in the world during the last 100 years,” a sentiment shared by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who called him, “the highest moral authority on earth.”

Likewise, Mother Teresa was so inspiring that a lifelong agnostic journalist and church dissenter, Malcolm Muggeridge, who chose to write a biography of her (Something Beautiful for God) and was able to get personal time with her, became a Catholic and spent his latter years writing Christian apologetics. Often her own words reveal her better than those of her admirers. For example, “I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: ‘My son did this to me.’ I begged her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: ‘I forgive my son.’ Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand.”