As Sainthood Campaign Opens, Aide Wants John Paul Beatified by August

c. 2005 Religion News Service ROME _ A solemn ceremony in Rome’s cathedral, accompanied by applause, tears and chanting, set Pope John Paul II on the road to sainthood with unprecedented speed Tuesday (June 28), less than three months after his death. The late pope’s longtime secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, said he hopes John Paul […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

ROME _ A solemn ceremony in Rome’s cathedral, accompanied by applause, tears and chanting, set Pope John Paul II on the road to sainthood with unprecedented speed Tuesday (June 28), less than three months after his death.

The late pope’s longtime secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, said he hopes John Paul is beatified by the end of the summer.


“We ask the Lord with all our heart that the cause of beatification and canonization that opened this evening may arrive very quickly at its crowning,” Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope’s vicar general for Rome, declared.

Leaders of church and state, Romans and pilgrims filled the Basilica of St. John Lateran for a vespers service and swearing-in of Ruini and the six members of a panel that will take testimony on the life, virtues and eventual miracles to be attributed to the Polish-born John Paul.

Young boys in Polish national costume waved Polish and Vatican flags, and some members of the congregation wiped tears from their eyes. Dziwisz, who was John Paul’s secretary for 39 years and was recently named to John Paul’s former post in Krakow, sat with head bowed.

Dziwisz told the Polish news agency PAP that he would like to see John Paul’s beatification announced at World Youth Day in Germany this summer, cutting to months a process that often takes decades and sometimes centuries.

“My dream, even if I know it is far-fetched, is that (Pope) Benedict XVI will make this announcement in August in Cologne during World Youth Day,” the prelate said.

An outpouring of popular support for John Paul’s canonization began immediately after his death on April 2. Some 3 million pilgrims stood on line for up to 18 hours to pay their last respects to the pope, and mourners unfurled banners reading “Santo Subito (Saint Immediately)” at his funeral.

Benedict cleared the way for the proceedings to begin when he announced on May 13 that he had waived the required five-year waiting period after a candidate’s death.


John Paul took similar action in the cause of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, but not until 18 months after her death in 1997. He proclaimed her blessed in October 2003 during celebrations of the 25th anniversary of his pontificate.

Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the so-called postulator who will present evidence in favor of sainthood, has declined to speculate on how long it might take for John Paul to be beatified, the last step before sainthood. “There is always the human factor at hearings like this, people who cannot appear, papers lost,” he said.

The tribunal will meet behind closed doors. It will make its recommendation to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which will then seek approval from the pope.

To qualify for beatification, a candidate must have been a martyr or have a miracle attributed to his or her intervention.

The Rome Catholic association Tiberis Custos proposed that the tribunal consider the 1981 assassination attempt on John Paul’s life by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca as martyrdom, even though he survived.

In a detailed account of John Paul’s life and qualifications for sainthood, which was repeatedly interrupted by applause and chants of “Giovanni Paolo,” the pope’s name in Italian, Ruini described him as a martyr.


“John Paul II really shed his own blood in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, and then he offered not blood but his entire life during the long years of his illness,” the prelate said.

“At the end, his suffering and his death, his blessing without voice from the window at the end of the Easter Mass were for all of humanity an extraordinarily effective witness of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, of the Christian significance of suffering and of death and of the force of salvation,” he said.

KRE/RB END POLK

Editors: Check the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for numerous file photos of Pope John Paul II. Search by “pope.”

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