Nearly a century ago, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is said to have famously dismissed the Vatican's influence with a remark that has echoed through the decades: "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" Though the phrase is historically debated in its exact origin, Winston Churchill attributed the quote to Stalin in his 1948 book The Second World War: The Gathering Storm.
The International Centre for Defence and Security explained Churchill's famous version, saying: "When the French foreign minister, Pierre Laval, went to Moscow in 1935 to enquire about the possibility of joint action against Germany and asked whether it was in his power to do something to improve the situation of Russian Catholics, Stalin reportedly replied with the famous quip."
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