Posted on 06/26/2005 5:27:55 AM PDT by Aussie Dasher
THE Roman Catholic Church will start examining the life and virtues of the late Pope John Paul II - already hailed as a saint by many in his flock - in a speeded-up process that could lead the pontiff to sainthood.
The diocese of Rome, of which the pope is the bishop, will open the beatification process in a solemn ceremony at Saint John in Lateran presided by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar of Rome.
The inquiry will examine "the life, virtues, and reputation of sainthood of the servant of God John Paul II."
Although the Church traditionally waits five years before beginning the beatification case for the pain and passions to subside after a person's death, the procedure for the charismatic Polish-born pontiff will begin less than three months after his death on April 2.
Chants of "Santo Subito" (Sainthood Now!) interrupted John Paul's funeral when hundreds of thousands from across the world converged on Rome to bid their last farewell to history's most travelled pope.
His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, announced on May 13 that John Paul II's beatification process would be launched without the usual delay.
But the process itself will be respected, the Vatican has said. Behind closed doors, the diocesan tribunal is set to examine the evidence as well as question witnesses and experts on whether the pope's life should be presented as an example to the faithful.
Among other requirements, a posthumous miracle has to be attributed to the late pontiff to prove that he has interceded with God.
Testimony of miracles performed during his lifetime will also be taken into consideration, although they do not carry the same weight.
Several accounts of miracles attributed to the late pope during his lifetime have already surfaced.
John Paul II's faithful secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz said in 2002 that an American suffering from a brain tumor had been cured after receiving communion from John Paul II.
Italian Cardinal Francesco Marchisano also hinted that he had a throat problem that was cured by Karol Wojtyla, the former pope's given name.
Ordinary faithful have been encouraged to send their testimony to Father Slawomir Oder, a Polish priest who will be arguing in favour of the pope's beatification, and an Internet site (vicariatusurbis.org) has been set up to follow the beatification process.
After being examined by the diocese, the case will be passed on to the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, before it is presented to the pope for his final approval.
John Paul II is in fact benefiting from the accelerated process that he revised during his 26-year pontificate, the third longest in history.
While beatifications and canonizations could take centuries in the past, John Paul II presided over several "fast-track" procedures, including the canonization in 2002 of Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei who died in 1975, and Mother Teresa, beatified in 2003 a mere six years after her death.
Pope John Paul in fact made more saints that all of his predecessors put together, proclaiming 482 new saints and beatifying 1,338 people.
Benedict XVI appears to want to slow down the beatifications and canonizations. In a return to Church tradition, the new pope has chosen not to preside over every beatification ceremony as John Paul II did.
He also blocked the case of an early 20th century French priest, Father Leon Dehon, who authored anti-Semitic texts and was originally scheduled to be beatified by John Paul II on April 24.
If he hadn't been Pope, everyone would have to pronounce "Wojtyla."
That being the case, thank the Lord he was Pope.
St. Karol doesn't sound as good...
No, it doesn't. I remember reading that when the Dean of the College of Cardinals (isn't it?) was preparing to announce JP's election, he had to ask someone how to pronounce the last name. When they told him, he said, "No, that's impossible! That's a terrible name!"
Italian chauvinism, I suppose :-).
I suspect there are a few readers of FR in Italy?
Saint By Acclamation of the People!!
Sorry, but not. Take the five years and do it right. There is no need at all for this "rush to judgment".
Will they also remember that John Paul II did nothing for the children abused by Criminal Homosexual Priests prior to and during his tenure as Pope.
This doesn't dent my respect for the man.
Try doing a little research into the number of priests dismissed from the clerical state by Pope John Paul II and then come back and edit your remarks and apologize.
Try telling that to the Archbishop, bishops and priests that were sacked by JPII in my home diocese alone.
Please give credit where it's due.
I don't argue that Satan's work is behind those priests and bishops who have done so much harm to the Church.
Yes, it was most unfotunate. I was pretty upset about the whole Catholic church being condemned for the actions of some renegade priests. In some cases, they probably were falsely accused. There is this little thing called forgiveness too. That's something that's hard to do, especially for me, but I'm trying. It's pretty hard to do it 490 times each time though.
John Paul II was still a wonderful force for good in this world often devoid of such heroes. I still support him.
Debate continues over pope's reaction to sex-abuse scandal
Alan Cooperman - Washington Post
Apr. 2, 2005-- During his long reign, Pope John Paul II apologized to Muslims for the Crusades, to Jews for anti-Semitism, to Orthodox Christians for the sacking of Constantinople, to Italians for the Vatican's associations with the Mafia and to scientists for the persecution of Galileo.
He apologized so often, in fact, that an Italian journalist compiled a book of more than 90 papal statements of contrition.
Yet the pope never apologized for the most shocking behavior that came to light on his watch: sexual abuse of children by priests and the church's attempts to hush it up. To some alleged victims, that is a puzzling omission and a deep stain on his legacy.
"I would hate to see all the good works this pope has done over his lifetime be overshadowed by this scandal. But that's what may happen," said Gary M. Bergeron, of Lowell, Mass., who says he was molested in the 1970s by Rev. Joseph Birmingham, a priest accused of abusing more than a dozen altar boys. Birmingham has since died.
Bergeron and other Boston-area survivors of clergy abuse traveled to Rome in 2003 to try to persuade the pope to meet with victims, issue an apology and condemn coverups. The small delegation included Bergeron's father, Joseph, who said that he, too, was abused as an altar boy but kept silent until he discovered many years later that the same thing had happened to two of his sons.
For five days that March, the Bergerons literally knocked on Vatican doors. Eventually they saw an official from the papal secretary of state's office. John Paul never met with them or any other known victims.
Still churchgoing Catholics, the Bergerons said they believe the pope was kept in the dark by his aides. "It's almost like a movie star complex where they don't let them read the bad press," Gary Bergeron said.
Others are more harsh in their judgments.
"I would say there's a significant amount of responsibility in the lap of the papacy for the sexual abuse crisis, not only in the United States but around the world," said Rev. Thomas Doyle, a former Air Force chaplain who has counseled many victims and advised them on lawsuits against the church. "Given that the Vatican insists on hierarchical authority and micromanagement, I think they have to take responsibility."
As a young canon lawyer in the mid-1980s, Doyle worked at the Vatican's embassy in Washington during the first major sexual abuse scandal in the U.S. church, which centered on a Louisiana priest, Gilbert Gauthe.
"Reports went over there, detailed reports," Doyle said. "I can tell you for certain that it reached the Vatican early in 1985, because I was working at the Vatican Embassy and I know that communications about the Gauthe case were sent to the Vatican - and they were seen by the pope."
But John Paul did not speak publicly about sexual abuse by priests until eight years later, after a furor over another pedophile priest, James Porter, who had more than 100 alleged victims in Fall River, Mass.
Addressing a group of visiting U.S. bishops in Rome in 1993, the pope said he shared their "sadness and disappointment when those entrusted with the ministry fail in their commitment, becoming a cause of public scandal." Much of his message, however, was an attack on "sensationalism" in the news media, leaving the strong impression that he believed the sex abuse problem was exaggerated in America.
"Woe to societies where scandal becomes an everyday event," he said.
Nevertheless, at the request of U.S. bishops, the pope in 1994 changed church law in the United States to lengthen the statute of limitations on accusations of sexual abuse to 10 years from the victim's 18th birthday. Previously, it had been five years from the date of the offense.
In 2002, a fresh scandal erupted when a Boston judge released church documents showing that Cardinal Bernard Law and his assistant bishops had secretly shuffled abusers from parish to parish. In response, John Paul amended canon law again by accepting the bishops' zero tolerance policy, though only after Vatican officials insisted on changes to protect the due process rights of accused priests. Law later resigned under pressure.
In recent years the pontiff also condemned sexual abuse more directly and forcefully. In his address to U.S. cardinals in April 2002, he said it was "rightly considered a crime by society" as well as "an appalling sin in the eyes of God."
"To the victims and their families, wherever they may be, I express my profound sense of solidarity and concern," he added. It was the closest he came to an apology.
To many victims and their families, however, the pope's actions fell short. Under John Paul, they contend, the Vatican was more aggressive about stamping out dissent within the priesthood over birth control than it was about protecting children.
"Everyone blames the bishops, but the pope's the one who picks them," Doyle said.
Debate over the pope's degree of responsibility for the scandal appears likely to continue for years. Many would assign the pope some indirect responsibility for the hierarchy's attempts to hide the problem.
"He encouraged an ecclesiastical culture that emphasizes vertical accountability - priest to bishop, bishop to the pope - and very little horizontal accountability" of bishops to one another and to the laity, says author Richard Gaillardetz.
"In general that is going to be one of the most serious criticisms leveled against this papacy, that he turned away from the direction many people saw in Vatican II, which is the principle of subsidiarity or decentralized control," Gaillardetz added, referring to the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. "That is a disturbing pattern, a larger pattern of this pontificate."
David Gibson, author of "The Coming Catholic Church," a 2003 book about long-term change in the church, also attributes the coverup partly to John Paul's insistence on central control.
"The bottom line is: Cardinal Law was the pope's favorite son in America, and Cardinal Law's sense of a corporate church that he ran, with everybody else on a need-to-know basis, was very much an attitude that came from Rome. Rome did not want scandals. Rome under this papacy was focused on exalting the iconic image of the priest," Gibson said.
Rightly or wrongly, Gibson contends, the sexual abuse scandal and John Paul will be inextricably linked.
"After so many years as pope, people have almost begun to forget what a heroic figure he was and how close he came to being martyred on St. Peter's Square," he said. "The scandal is not going to define his legacy, but it does mean that every obituary, every discussion of his legacy, will have to say, 'But ...' "
The complete Hierarchy did nothing 'till a number of Newspapers smoked them out in the courts in 2001 and by then they admit to 11,000 children damaged by these criminal perverts with full knowledge of the Hierarchy up to the Pope.
Ibelieve JP II was installed as Pope in 1978 and he had to know plenty. Read the most recent book By Gerald Renner and Jason Berry, "Vows of Silence".
Then follow what they did to Father Thomas Doyle when he co-wrote the Petersen Report in 1985 for the United States Conference of Bishops outlining the damage done to the children and the steps the Church should take.
Most telling is the Appointment by JP II of the Criminal Cardinal Law to Arch Priest of the Basillica of Mary Major In the Vatican, and What a Profound and Arrogant Insult to the Faithful Catholics in the Pews.
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