AFP
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy leaves the Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic church after attending mass, on October 28, 1962 in Washington DC, few hours before Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev offers to retire the soviet missiles from Cuba. The Cuban missile crisis and its aftermath was the most serious U.S.-Soviet confrontation of the Cold War. e. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

COMMENTARY: Sixty years ago, it took the skill and resolve of key statesmen and religious leaders — in Washington, in Moscow, at the Vatican — to pull the world back from the precipice.