It Was Gorbachev, Not The Pope, Who Brought The System Down

Johnathon Steele argues that It Was Gorbachev, Not The Pope, Who Brought The System Down because

...The [Polish] government sat down to negotiate with Solidarity again only in August 1988, by which time Mikhail Gorbachev had already launched the drive towards pluralistic politics in the USSR itself and publicly promised no more Soviet military interventions in eastern Europe.

The impetus for Gorbachev's reforms was not external pressure from the west, dissent in eastern Europe or the Pope's calls to respect human rights, but economic stagnation in the Soviet Union and internal discontent within the Soviet elite.

And

Nor was John Paul's attack on liberation theology in the 1980s motivated primarily by the fact that the so-called "option for the poor" was infused with Marxism. The Pope was worried by other features too. He felt it was being used to justify violence and leading Catholic parish priests to support armed struggle by peasants against repressive landowners and feudal dictatorships.

...

John Paul also opposed liberation theology because he saw priests defy their bishops and challenge the church's hierarchical structure. Even while communism still held power in Europe, he had more in common with it than many of his supporters admit. He recentralised power in the Vatican and reversed the perestroika of his predecessor-but-two John XXIII, who had given more say to local dioceses.

This is why democratic change cannot come from the top. The people must want it enough to force those in power to accept the new reality. It is no good hoping that the new pope will be liberal. The power structure is authoritarian and must be smashed so as to be replace by a more democratic structure.