Review of The Shoes of the Fisherman

Recent viewers and reviewers tend to marvel at the "prescience" of the movie and the novel it is based on, mistakenly associating the election of the Slavic pope with that of John Paul II some years in the future. In fact, novelist Morris West based the character of Kirill Lakota on two Ukrainian (Byzantine Rite) Catholic bishops, who were actually persecuted by the Soviet regime and imprisoned in Siberia. Patriarch Josef Cardinal Slipyj was released in 1963 thanks to the efforts of the presiding Pope (and JFK), and lived in Rome until his death in 1984. The movie screenplay and Quinn as actor do convey well a great deal of Slipyj's character, who was a tall, imposing presence with a fierce intellect and inspiring faith.