Pope John Paul II highly popular in V4 countries - survey

Pope John Paul II, born 100 years ago, is highly popular in the four Visegrad countries, the Budapest-based Central European Perspectives (CEPER) institute told MTI on Sunday, citing a recent survey. The only Polish pope in the history of the Catholic Church is highly respected in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, with at least three fourths of the population holding a high opinion on him, it said in a statement. His lasting popularity may be attributed to the keen attention he had always paid to the region, it said. Merely 3 percent of respondents said they had never heard about the pope, the institute said.