John Paul the Great
Despite popular acclamation, his
canonization may be years away
by Patrick Novecosky
When the sun set over the Vatican on April 2, last year’s vigil of Mercy Sunday, the Church’s beloved shepherd, Pope John Paul II, departed this world for the Father’s outstretched arms.
Even before he was laid to rest in a crypt below St. Peter’s Basilica, the faithful were crying out for him to be declared a saint and elevated to the rank of John Paul the Great. On April 28, Pope Benedict XVI waived the usual five-year waiting period before beginning the cause. Work immediately began on the official declaration of John Paul’s sanctity, and he was named “Servant of God.”
Although there were reports of John Paul-related miracles during the Holy Father’s lifetime, a miracle via his intercession after death is necessary for him to be declared “blessed.” A second miracle is necessary for sainthood.
Reported miracles
In January, the Polish priest charged with shepherding John Paul’s cause for sainthood said he believes the healing of a French nun suffering from Parkinson’s disease could be the miracle needed for the pope’s beatification.
Monsignor Slawomir Oder, postulator of the cause, told Italian radio that he had chosen the case of the French nun from among the many apparently miraculous healings that people from around the world had reported to him. The case involved a French religious who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s when she was very young. She apparently prayed for John Paul’s intercession for healing and was immediately cured.
John Paul had suffered from Parkinson’s, a progressive disease that attacks the nervous system.
The postulator said he wouldn’t talk in depth about the case until doctors had reviewed the nun’s case history and confirmed that there likely was no natural or medical explanation for her healing, Catholic News Service reported.
Monsignor Oder said there is still much work to do. His staff is interviewing people who knew the pope, preparing a thorough biography and collecting all his writings for study by a panel of theologians.
Before Pope Benedict XVI can proclaim that his predecessor heroically lived a life of Christian virtue, Msgr. Oder must compile all the information collected in a positio, a document of multiple volumes explaining who the candidate was and how he lived and acted. A separate report is prepared on the miracle.
“The procedure for the verification of the miracle is a process that can parallel the verification of heroic virtues,” he said, so the miracle can be submitted before the positio.
Nevertheless, he does not expect the process to be completed soon, he said. While a Vatican panel of historians and theologians review the positio, another panel of theologians and a panel of Vatican-appointed physicians will review the nun’s medical records.
Already a saint
Although the canonization process may well take years to complete, John Paul II is already a saint in the hearts and minds of most Catholics—and many others as well.
Indeed, John Paul may be able to claim the title “The Great” before being pronounced a saint. Canon law has no official process for granting the title which establishes itself through popular and continued usage.
For the first 15 centuries of the Church, before beatification and canonization procedures were consigned to the authority of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (instituted in 1588 by Pope Sixtus V) and to the Holy Father himself, it was the “vox populi” or “spontaneous local attribution” which led to the proclamation of saints.
Current practices for declaring saints are a more precise method of ensuring a candidate’s sanctity. In fact, canonization does not make the person a saint. Rather, canonization is the Church’s recognition that the person is with God and is an example of following Christ worthy of imitation by the faithful.
“These procedures were adopted over several hundred years—and refined by John Paul II—to insure that the process is as thorough and searching as human ingenuity can make it,” according to George Weigel, John Paul’s official biographer.
There is no need for the Church to immediately declare John Paul a saint, Weigel said, because “the vast majority of the people of the Church already regard John Paul II as a saint and seek his intercession. I would let the process take its normal course so that some critic can’t say, in 20 years or so, ‘Well, they rushed it because they were afraid that something would come out.’”
To keep up to date on John Paul’s cause, visit: www.JohnPaulIIBeatification.org
Patrick Novecosky is editor of Legatus Magazine.
SIDEBAR John Paul’s legacy to America Pope John Paul II had great affection for the United States. He was only the second pope to set foot on American soil—and he did it seven times. During his nearly 27-year pontificate, the Holy Father called America to use its resources and influence to lead the world in establishing a Culture of Life. And he didn’t pull any punches doing it. “John Paul II understood and appreciated the distinctive role that the United States plays in the world,” said papal biographer George Weigel. “That’s why he was so insistent that America follow its best instincts and become a promoter of the Culture of Life, rather than being an accomplice in forwarding the global Culture of Death.” On his first visit to the United States in 1979, John Paul confronted the culture war head on: “Faced with today’s problems and disappointments, many people will try to escape from their responsibility. Escape in selfishness, escape in sexual pleasure, escape in drugs, escape in violence, escape in indifference and cynical attitudes. I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape.” His call to America grew stronger as the years passed. In his final visit to the U.S. in 1999, he told an audience in St. Louis that “radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be for the world an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society. “America first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths. America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience. And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace truth—truth revealed by God.” Why was the late Pope bullish on America? “Because he understood that the United States was different,” Weigel said. “Unlike the French revolution and its modern imitations, America hadn’t been founded against the civilization of the Christian West, but as an expression of that civilization. And that’s why he wanted the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe to be in conversation with the United States, which had shown that modernity does not necessarily mean de-Christianization or Christophobia.” Indeed, the Holy Father told President George W. Bush at their first meeting in July 2001 that “the world continues to look to America with hope. “Yet it does so with an acute awareness of the crisis of values being experienced in Western society, ever more insecure in the face of the ethical decisions indispensable for humanity’s future course.” © 2006 Legatus |