PAPAL TOME HITS THE STANDS -- AND DELIVERS

Pope John Paul II's 229-page "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" -- the first mass-appeal book by a sitting Pontiff -- starts selling at bookstores worldwide tomorrow morning. TIME religion writer Richard N. Ostling, who's sneaked an advance peak, says U.S. distributor Alfred A. Knopf's million-copy advance printing may be an American record. The $20 hardcover is being put on sale in 35 countries in 21 languages, a commercial feat rivaled only by Mikhail Gorbachev's "Perestroika" and Madonna's teaser "Sex." Ostling, who says many expected repackaged boilerplate from the Holy See, says the Pope's book actually breaks new ground by providing his personal (if unsurprising) views on abortion, Marxism, competing religions and bad things happening to good people. "What he does," Ostling says, "is take on some of the great existential issues of modern life with an extremely personal, direct piece of evangelism." One tidbit: Did God mastermind communism's fall? The Pope says Russia's 1917 peas