Popes John XXIII and John Paul II to Be Canonized

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Europe |Popes John XXIII and John Paul II to Be Canonized

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Priest students with a picture depicting John Paul II, left, and John XXIII near St. Peter's Square in the Vatican on Friday. Michael Kappeler/European Pressphoto Agency

VATICAN CITY â€” Pope John XXIII was the rotund Italian pontiff with a common touch, who told jokes, embraced the poor and became beloved as â€œthe Good Pope.â€ To many liberal Catholics, he is still revered for the Second Vatican Council, the landmark event of the early 1960s that sought to move the Roman Catholic Church into the modern age.

Pope John Paul II was the charismatic Polish pontiff who liked to sneak away from the Vatican to ski and who retooled the papacy in a new era of globalized media. His vision of a more rigid Catholicism made him a revered figure among many conservative Catholics suspicious of the liberalizing spirit introduced by John XXIII.

â€œThe man who took the lid off and the man who tried to put it back on,â€ said Eamon Duffy, professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Cambridge.

Now a new pope, Francis, is making his most public attempt to sew together the two menâ€™s different legacies as he pushes his own vision of a church under a big tent. Francis will preside on Sunday over a first-of-its-kind joint canonization of the former popes, both iconic figures in the 20th-century church who will be elevated to sainthood during a Mass at St. Peterâ€™s Square.

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Pilgrims Gather in Vatican City

St. Peterâ€™s Square was packed with tourists and pilgrims on Friday ahead of the canonizations of John XXIII and John Paul II on Sunday.

Publish Date April 26, 2014

Credit Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

For Francis, who has spent the first year of his papacy straddling the divisions within the church, this twinning allows him to deftly avoid elevating one man over the other and serves his broader agenda of de-emphasizing ideological battles as he tries to renew excitement among the faithful and reverse a steady decline in church attendance.

â€œThe Catholic Church is big enough to encompass the devotees of John XXIII and John Paul II,â€ said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. â€œThat is the message he is sending.â€

Unquestionably, the pairing has transformed the Mass into a global media event. Huge crowds are pouring into Rome, with estimates that hundreds of thousands of people â€” possibly more than two million â€” will fill St. Peterâ€™s Square or watch the ceremony on more than a dozen large screens erected in piazzas across Rome. Portraits of both former popes have been draped on St. Peterâ€™s Basilica, and souvenir shops are selling canonization trinkets.

â€œWe love both popes,â€ said Antonio Rossi, 31, a teacher from Naples who walked with his girlfriend around the square on Friday. â€œThey are two figures who left a great mark on the Catholic Church. What is important is that they both become saints because that is how I perceive them in my life.â€

Vatican officials have played down the political subtext of the ceremony, arguing that reducing the two former popes to a left-right political shorthand is inaccurate and cheapens what for many Catholics is a joyous and deeply spiritual moment. The Rev. Thomas Rosica, who is working with the Vatican press office for the ceremony, disagreed with those who see the ceremony as a calculated gesture of reconciliation.

â€œSome would say that, but I wouldnâ€™t go that far,â€ Father Rosica said. â€œWe donâ€™t use something like this to do that.â€

Without question, though, the event has stirred considerable debate among many Catholics, about the process of canonizing saints and about the legacies of the two former popes, especially John Paul. He is regarded as a defining figure of the 20th century, revered for his fight against Communism in Eastern Europe and admired by many for how he endured suffering during his long, public illness before his death in 2005.

But posthumously, criticism of his papacy has sharpened, for how his retrenchment of church power to the Vatican ultimately led to scandals, and for his failure to confront the clerical sexual abuse scandal, even as evidence mounted of a widespread crisis. Some critics argue that his canonization has been wrongly fast-tracked or should not happen at all. Advocates for sexual abuse victims have come to Rome to protest that he is unworthy of sainthood.

At a Vatican news conference on Friday, John Paulâ€™s former spokesman, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, defended the former popeâ€™s record on the response to the sexual abuse scandals and argued that the â€œpurity of his thoughtâ€ had made it difficult for the pontiff to accept that priests could abuse children. He also said that John Paul did take steps to address the crisis, even as critics have called them grossly inadequate.

Even some who are critical of John Paulâ€™s record on the sexual abuse crisis say that it does not negate his worthiness for canonization, since sainthood is not conferred as a statement of perfection in life but rather for holiness. And his selection is certainly popular among many Catholics, for whom John Paul is the man who spread the faith across the world as he visited more than 120 countries during a 27-year papacy.

â€œJohn Paul II is the pope I relate to,â€ said Gabriel Marcos, 29, a business student in Paris who came to Rome with a group of French Catholics. â€œHeâ€™s the pope from my childhood.â€

More than any pope, John Paul recognized the emotional and symbolic value of conferring sainthoods as he sought to spread Catholicism around the world, experts say. He canonized 482 saints from numerous countries during his papacy â€” more than all his predecessors combined. To do this, he streamlined the canonization process in 1983, reducing to five years the waiting period after a personâ€™s death before the canonization process can be initiated.

When John Paul died, his successor, Benedict XVI, waived the shorter waiting period and sped up the process so that John Paul will now become a saint only nine years after his death. When Benedict unexpectedly resigned last year, leading to the election of Francis as pope, the sainthood process for John Paul had already largely been completed, even as some critics argued that it was happening too fast.

â€œFrancis has inherited this,â€ said Professor Duffy, the historian, noting that the new pope would have faced a huge outcry had he sought to slow things down. â€œIn a sense, doing these two together is the least-bad solution. He canâ€™t be accused of identifying with a single party.â€

Francis himself has already shown a willingness to use his own discretion in naming saints. This month, he waived the requirement of evidence of two miracles performed at the posthumous intercession of a candidate and declared three new saints from the Americas: a former Jesuit priest from Brazil and two leading Catholic figures from Canada.

With his folksy style, Francis is often compared to John XXIII, the son of a tenant farmer in northern Italy. The canonization process for John, who died in 1963, had been underway for decades but was slowed by his lack of the second required miracle. Francis intervened, waiving the requirement and pairing him with John Paul for Sundayâ€™s event.

Despite the excitement among many Catholics, the precedent of canonizing popes worries Professor Duffy and other experts. â€œAre we going to have every pope canonized now?â€ he asked, noting that the process is also underway for some other former popes.

The final wrinkle for Sunday involves Benedict, who has largely remained largely in seclusion in his role as pope emeritus. He will attend the ceremony, a Vatican spokesman said Saturday, and may even take part in the ceremony. That will make it a Mass of four popes, rather than just three.

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.