Pope Puts John Paul II on Fast Track to Sainthood

c. 2005 Religion News Service ROME _ Pope Benedict XVI announced Friday (May 13) that the Vatican will give John Paul II _ the pope who created more blesseds and saints than all his predecessors combined _ a head start on the road to sainthood by allowing the process to begin immediately. Responding to unprecedented […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

ROME _ Pope Benedict XVI announced Friday (May 13) that the Vatican will give John Paul II _ the pope who created more blesseds and saints than all his predecessors combined _ a head start on the road to sainthood by allowing the process to begin immediately.

Responding to unprecedented popular demand that resembled sainthood by acclamation in the early church, Benedict made the surprise announcement barely six weeks after John Paul died on April 2, and little more than three weeks after his own election on April 19.


The announcement took on added drama because it came on the 24th anniversary of an attempted assassination of John Paul II by a Turkish gunman during an audience in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981.

Concluding an address to Roman clergy assembled in the Baroque splendor of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Benedict said with a smile, “And now, dear priests and deacons, I want to give you news that surely will give you great joy and pleasure.”

Benedict then read the formal notification in Latin from the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints waiving the usual five-year waiting period after the death of a candidate for sainthood. The congregation said the process leading to the beatification and canonization of John Paul would “start immediately.”

The announcement was greeted with a standing ovation in which the pope and Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar general for Rome and president of the Italian bishops conference, joined.

“I see that that everyone knows Latin well,” Benedict commented wryly.

In waiving the five-year waiting period required by church law, Benedict followed the example set by John Paul in the case of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She died on Sept. 5, 1997, and John Paul declared her blessed in record time, on Oct. 19, 2003, during celebrations of the 25th anniversary of his papacy.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints said it dispensed with the waiting period in the case of John Paul at the request of Ruini and Benedict, as well as “the peculiar circumstances exhibited.”

An estimated 3 million mourners converged on the Vatican during the week of John Paul’s lying in state and funeral. Banners reading “Santo Subito (Saint Immediately)” were unfurled at the funeral in St. Peter’s Square on April 8, and dozens of cardinals reportedly signed a petition to the new pope in support of the popular appeal.


Archbishop Edward Nowak, secretary of the congregation, said reports of miracles happening after prayers to John Paul began pouring into the Vatican immediately after his death.

The process leading to beatification, the step before sainthood, requires proof of the candidate’s “heroic virtues” and either martyrdom or a miracle attributed to his intercession. Another miracle is needed to be canonized, or formally declared a saint.

John Paul further speeded up the process for Mother Teresa by permitting the congregation to examine a “scientifically unexplainable” miracle attributed to her at the same time that it carried out its investigation into her “heroic virtues.”

During his 26-year papacy, John Paul created a record 1,338 blesseds and 482 saints, more than all his predecessors put together since the process was centralized at the Vatican in 1588. At his election the number of saints had stood at 302.

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John Paul considered it important for Catholics to be able to venerate examples of sanctity in many spheres of life. The saints he created ranged from Edith Stein, the Jewish-born philosopher turned Carmelite nun who died in a Nazi death camp, to Jose Escriva de Balaguer, a Spanish priest who founded the elite Opus Dei Prelature.

Benedict announced the fast track for John Paul’s candidacy on the anniversary of the assassination attempt by Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca, which happened on the Feast of the Madonna of Fatima. The feast marks the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to three peasant children in Portugal in 1917.


The late pope had a special devotion to Mary, and believed that it was the Madonna of Fatima who deflected the bullets fired at him on her feast day. He also linked a prophecy made by the Madonna of Fatima to the attempt on his life.

KRE/JL END POLK

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