In the news: “According to the Italian daily La Stampa, John Paul II will be beatified on April 2, 2010 — the fifth anniversary of his death. Reporter Giacomo Galeazzi reports that thanks to an acceleration in the beatification process, documents pertaining to John Paul’s cause, called the “positio,” have already been forwarded by a commission of theologians to be examined by cardinals.“This is very good news,” says Msgr. Tadeusz Pieronek, the Polish priest who has been responsible for the diocesan phase of the beatification process in Krakow, La Stampa reported.” The whole story is here.

Albany Times Union reports here: “…Jeanne Jugan, a lowly kitchen maid who took care of the poor and elderly in a French village in the 1800s, has been selected for sainthood by Pope Benedict XVI. She will be canonized on Oct. 11 after a decades-long review by the Vatican that included her beatification in 1982.”

Vatican news today:”Pope Benedict XVI has agreed to speed up the beatification process of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, who was murdered by communist secret services in 1984.”

This cause holds particular interest to me. Father Popieluszko, a close friend of Pope John Paul II from Poland, was murdered while Laurelyn and I were on our honeymoon in Western Europe in the fall of 1984. We followed the grim news in the International Herald Tribune. Weeks later, while in Rome and at the Vatican, we witnessed one of the most extraordinarily powerful scenes of our lives. This scene appears in my book, but I wrote about it first in a column in my newspaper the week JPII died in April 2005. The column follows:

Setting business aside to remember the pope

At some level, the talk of the Triad this week is similar to the talk around the world. The life and legacy of Pope John Paul II was so far-reaching that it had an impact on people everywhere, whether or not they are Catholic.

It’s with that in mind that I momentarily set aside Triad business to share an experience I had during the early part of the pope’s 26-year reign as the church’s 264th pontiff.

It was November 1984, and my wife and I were in Rome on our honeymoon. Bus No. 64 carried us across town, across the Tiber to Vatican City and a Wednesday morning audience with the pope.

We dashed through St. Peter’s Square, through Bernini’s colonnade and into the modern auditorium near the basilica.

After being searched for weapons by Swiss guards — the pope had been shot in the square just three years earlier — we took our seats near the front. Some 8,000 people filled the space. When Pope John Paul II made his entrance, resplendent in his white robes and cape, a kind of electricity swept through the hall.

Like teenagers at a pop concert, the scores of Spanish nuns in front of us went wild. I had never experienced someone able to exude charisma with merely a nod or wave. But you could feel it. And that was just the beginning.

A master communicator, the pope delivered his set address that morning in eight languages. He saved Polish for last. A large group of Poles were seated together several rows behind us, and the pope had spotted them.

His address had been on the sanctity of marriage, and he offered a special blessing for newlyweds like ourselves. But now the pope was departing from his text. He looked directly out at his people, the Poles, as his voice grew more intense, his gestures more animated. We had been following the news; we knew why.

Just a month earlier in Poland, Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a parish priest and a dear friend of the pope’s, had been kidnapped and murdered by Polish police and dumped in a river. The priest had been silenced for his support of the outlawed union Solidarity and his opposition to Communist rule.

The pope reflected on that tragedy as he spoke — his low, steady voice charged with emotion. I knew John Paul had suffered as a young man under Nazism; what must he be thinking, I wondered. As a young, naïve American spoiled by our freedoms at home, I knew nothing about actual political oppression.

But now, in the voice and presence of this pope, I could easily imagine its suffocating nature as his uncompromising stand against such inhumanity filled the room.

My wife and I were startled witnesses to this suddenly intense moment, but the Poles in the crowd were grateful recipients. When the pope stopped speaking, dozens of them rose in unison. They unfurled a Solidarity banner, stretched it wide and held it aloft. Others held up crucifixes or simply their hands flashing a V-for-victory sign.

At that time, those simple actions would have landed them in jail, or worse, back home. Now they were defiant, emboldened. All eyes in the auditorium were transfixed on this group as they spontaneously began to sing a gorgeous, hymn-like song in Polish.

Their voices rang out, but not in celebration. Their faces were masks of solemn determination. As they sang, I turned to see John Paul drop his head into his right hand, which was propped up on the arm of his high-backed chair.

With that simple gesture, he was telling them: your pain is my pain, your struggle is my struggle. There was no mistaking that.

I looked at my wife as tears streamed down her face. She was not alone in that regard. We knew we were witnessing something extraordinary, glorious even — the will and spirit of one man giving courage to an entire people. From our place in the auditorium between the pope and the Poles, that power seemed to pass right through us like lightening.

As we were leaving, I met a young Polish man and asked him about the song. He explained that it was the equivalent of “We Shall Overcome,” a plea to God asking him to restore freedom to Poland.

In 1984, years before the end of the Soviet Union or the toppling of the Berlin Wall, such a plea could not be taken for granted. Few people would’ve dared envision Eastern Europe and much of Asia unleashed from the grip of such totalitarianism. Yet one man did.

Since his death on April 2, commentators have emphasized the political role Pope John Paul II played in contributing to the fall of communism. But what we saw that long-ago morning transcended politics and revealed perhaps the pope’s greatest influence.

What we saw was nothing less than John Paul’s spiritual force on those who would actually bring about the collapse.

-end-

 
The Vatican reports that nine Catholic heroes are closer to sainthood as the result of recent declarations by Pope Benedict XVI. The story is here. This is interesting insofar as Benedict was seen by many upon becoming pope in 2005 as dramatically slowing down the number of saints and blesseds named. This does not appear to be the case; at the very least, he seems to be looking favorably among those in the long pipeline filled by his predecessor (and prodigious saint maker) Pope John Paul II.

Now the big question is: when will JPII make the list? A miracle has been credited to him, which would clear the way for beatification, but it has not yet been approved. What’s the status?

Photo by Len Catanoso Jr. during the canonization of Padre Gaetano Catanoso

HAVANA (Reuters) Nov. 29 – Cuban President Raul Castro attended a ceremony for the country’s first religious beatification on Saturday in another sign of warming relations between the Communist-ruled island and the Catholic Church…After Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolution in 1959, Cuba expelled priests and Catholics faced decades of official atheism. Ties improved after Cuba guaranteed religious freedom in 1992 and Pope John Paul II visited six years later.

Adam Sobsey, a talented book reviewer for The Independent, an alternative weekly in Raleigh, N.C., reviews My Cousin the Saint in this week’s paper. The review is here. An excerpt:

“Although Catanoso often shows us his skeptical-journalist card (he’s a Pulitzer nominee and the executive editor of the Triad’s Business Journal), the combination of his ardent earnestness and his felicitous discoveries mark him as a man who wants very much to believe—partially for the very reason that he seems to keep finding only good news everywhere he looks. Even when people close to him die, there’s uplift at the end.”

The Los Angeles Times today carries a column I wrote about the new pope, the old pope and my favorite saint. Thanks to my good friend Frank Wilkinson, executive editor of The Week in New York, for motivation and editing assistance. The piece is here.

It starts like this: “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent,” George Orwell said. The Vatican lately seems to share Orwell’s skepticism.

Pope Benedict XVI has made no secret of his disdain for the high volume of saints named by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005. John Paul II conducted 482 canonizations, naming more saints in 26 years than his predecessors had canonized in the previous four centuries.

Since becoming pope, Benedict has stopped attending the elaborate beatification ceremonies in St. Peter’s Square, the last step before canonization, and has issued a call for “greater sobriety and rigor” in the process. Last week, he replaced the leader of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, an office that fully supported John Paul’s active saint-making philosophy. Vatican-watchers expect the new leader, Archbishop Angelo Amato, to throw more wrenches in the saint-making machinery.

So who need saints, anyway? That’s a question I take personally. Read the whole thing.

This would seem a simple question: is Mother Teresa a saint? If you took a vote, she’d likely win in a landslide. But as I learned firsthand in the course of researching my book, canonization is not a popularity contest. So while Pope John Paul II placed his friend from Calcutta on a saintly fast track, waiving the five-year waiting period before the cause could be considered, things have slowed considerably since her beatification.

This article explains why.

Vatican officials said today that the beatificaton of Pope Pius XII, the controversial pope of World War II, is not imminent. There is debate still about whether Pius should have taken a stronger stand against Hitler’s known atrocities, but there is also ample evidence that he did what he could to shelter thousands of Roman Jews during the war.

This much about the Italian pope is not controversial. On September 11, 1941, he met briefly and privately with a future saint, Padre Gaetano Catanoso. I detail this meeting in Chapter 4 of my book — a regal and humbling moment. The old priest had a big favor to ask because he had a huge problem to solve. But he couldn’t do it, simply saying: “I ask only your blessing, Holy Father, for me, my nuns, the children of my institutes, and those who are dear to me.”

More on Pope Pius XII here.

The question is often asked: can a beatification or canonization be revoked? Answers offered here.