NEWS STORY: Pope to Beatify John XXIII and Controversial Pius IX

c. 2000 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II on Sunday (Sept. 3) will beatify John XXIII, one of the most beloved of Roman Catholic pontiffs, together with Pius IX, who is among the most controversial. While the decision to beatify John XXIII, raising him to within one step of sainthood, has […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II on Sunday (Sept. 3) will beatify John XXIII, one of the most beloved of Roman Catholic pontiffs, together with Pius IX, who is among the most controversial.

While the decision to beatify John XXIII, raising him to within one step of sainthood, has been greeted with almost universal praise, Jewish groups and secular Italians have energetically protested the elevation of Pius IX to the ranks of the blesseds.


Italian pope-watchers call Pius IX “the last pope king” because it was during his papacy that the Vatican was forced to surrender its rule over the papal states of central Italy. John XXIII is known simply and affectionately as “the good pope.”

Although both men defied the expectations of the cardinals who elected them and both called historic Vatican Councils, their papacies stand in striking contrast.

Opponents of Pius IX’s beatification have labeled it a purely political move, aimed at placating conservative Catholics by honoring a reactionary pope to counterbalance the pontiff who opened the church to the modern world.

Church officials denied that charge. The Rev. Monsignor Brunero Gherardini,postulator of Pius IX’s cause, called the beatification an “act of justice” too long delayed by objections from outside the church.

“They were both great saints although very different human beings,”

Gherardini said.

In a letter of protest to the Vatican, Seymour Reich, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Concerns, disagreed sharply. He said that Pius IX’s role as pope “stands in sharp contrast to that of the saintly Pope John XXIII” and of John Paul II as well.

Reich, writing on behalf of a coalition of U.S.-based Jewish groups,attacked Pius IX as “the pope who perpetuated centuries-old church contempt and hatred of Jews, referring to them as `dogs’ and declaring that `of these dogs, there are too many of them present in Rome.”’

Pius IX’s pontificate of almost 32 years was the longest in history. He led the church from 1846 to 1878, a time when much of Europe was in ferment and Italy was in the throes of unification and growing anti-clericalism.


Seen as a liberal at his election, Pius IX at first appeared sympathetic to the cause of a united Italy. He declared a political amnesty, dismantled the gates of Rome’s Jewish ghetto and accepted a degree of consultation in the administration of both church and state.

But he changed tack in 1848 when the assassination of his prime minister, Count Pellegrino Rossi, on the steps of the papal chancery and fears of revolution sent him fleeing into temporary exile in the southern port city of Gaeta, near Naples.

After his return to Rome two years later, he became a concerted opponent of unification and caused international outrage by kidnapping from his home in Bologna a 6-year-old Jewish boy, who had been secretly baptized by a Christian maid when near death as an infant. The boy, Edgardo Mortara, became the pope’s ward and lived his life as a priest.

Pius IX’s key contributions to church teaching were his definition of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, his publication of a “Syllabus of Errors” in theology and his convening in 1869-70 of the First Vatican Council, which declared the doctrine of papal infallibility.

John XXIII was elected pope on Oct. 28, 1958, just a month before his 77th birthday. An experienced Vatican diplomat who had come home to serve as patriarch of Venice, he was expected to be a transitional pope, giving his fellow cardinals time to consider their new course after the almost 19-year reign of the aloof, patrician and doctrinaire Pius XII.

But John XXIII refused the limitations of a caretaker pope. During his four years and seven months on the throne of St. Peter, he won wide popularity by taking pains to act more as a simple pastor than a prelate while at the same time making dramatic moves that changed the course of the church in the modern world.


John XXIII pressed for peaceful coexistence between the West and the communist East, sought unity among Christians and advocated dialogue with non-Christians. He removed words offensive to Jews from the Good Friday liturgy and introduced himself to one group of Jewish visitors by saying, “I am Joseph, your brother.”

The Second Vatican Council, which he opened on Oct. 11, 1962, went on after his death to issue landmark documents on the liturgy, the church in the world, ecumenism, the relations of the church to non-Christian religions, religious life and the ministry of priests and laity.

Two months before his death on June 3, 1963, of stomach cancer, he published what was in effect his last testament, the encyclical “Pacem in terris” (Peace on Earth), addressed to all mankind. In it he argued that the recognition of human rights is the foundation of world peace.

John Paul II, who during his 22 years as pope has created more blesseds and saints than all his predecessors put together, will also beatify three other candidates for sainthood on Sunday.

They are Tommaso Reggio, a 19th century Italian bishop who founded the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Marta; Guillaume-Joseph Chaminade, a French priest who in 1800 founded the Marianist Family; and Joseph-Aloysius, an Irish monk who, as Columba Marmion, served as abbot of the Benedictine Maredsous Abbey in Belgium in the early 20th century.

KRE END POLK

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