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May 23, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 11Oakland,
CA
ROME—Pope Benedict XVI announced 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.
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.
Mourners
hold a banner that reads “Sainthood immediately” during the
funeral Mass for Pope John Paul II, April 9, in the Vatican’s St
Peter’s Square.
RNS PHOTO/REUTERS/Yves Herman
