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Pope Francis announces he will declare Blessed John XXIII and John Paul II as saints at a single ceremony on April 27th 2014 - also known as Divine Mercy Sunday
The Vatican has announced the canonisation date for John Paul II as Sunday, 27th April 2014
With thanks to the Catholic News Service for the image
(I grew up with John XXIII as my Pope, although it was Paul VI that I saw in Rome and John Paul II who brought understanding into my life on so many different levels for which I thank him most profusely)
Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII will be declared saints on 27 April 2014, Pope Francis has announced.
The Pope said in July that he would canonise his two predecessors, after approving a second miracle attributed to John Paul. Polish John Paul, the first non-Italian pope for more than 400 years, led the Catholic Church from 1978-2005. Pope John was pontiff from 1958-1963, calling the Second Vatican Council that transformed the Church.
The decision to canonise the two at the same time appears designed to unify Catholics, correspondents say.
John Paul II is a favourite of conservative Catholics, while John XXIII is widely admired by the Church's progressive wing.
John Paul stood out for his media-friendly, globetrotting style. He was a fierce critic of communism, and is credited with helping inspire opposition to communist rule in eastern Europe. John Paul has been on a fast track to sainthood since his death, when crowds in St Peter's Square chanted "santo subito" ("sainthood now"). During his own papacy he simplified the process by which people are made saints, and created more of them than all previous popes combined.
John XXIII is remembered for introducing the vernacular to replace Latin in church masses and for creating warmer ties between the Catholic Church and the Jewish faith. He has a big following in Italy, where he is known as Il Papa Buono, the good pope. The BBC's David Willey reports from Rome that Pope John was in many ways similar to Pope Francis, a humble, down-to-earth man with a fine sense of humour.
Two living popes are expected to be present at the canonisation ceremony: Francis, who will officiate, and Pope Benedict, who retired earlier this year. The double canonisation will be the first in the Church's history.
Two miracles have been officially attributed to Pope John Paul II - the number usually needed for canonisation.
The first miracle was the apparent curing of a 49-year-old French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre Normand. She had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, the same malady which afflicted the pope himself in his later years. The second miracle came on the day of John Paul II's beatification by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI. A Costa Rican woman reportedly made an "inexplicable recovery" from a serious brain illness, and the only explanation was believed to be the fact that her family had prayed for John Paul II's intercession.
Pope John XXIII was beatified by John Paul II in 2000, and Pope Francis took the unusual step of waiving the requirement of a second miracle in his case.
Below we publish the full text of Pope Benedict XVI’s homily on the occasion of the beatification of Blessed John Paul II:
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Six years ago we gathered in this Square to celebrate the funeral of
Pope John Paul II. Our grief at his loss was deep, but even greater was
our sense of an immense grace which embraced Rome and the whole world: a
grace which was in some way the fruit of my beloved predecessor’s
entire life, and especially of his witness in suffering. Even then we
perceived the fragrance of his sanctity, and in any number of ways God’s
People showed their veneration for him. For this reason, with all due
respect for the Church’s canonical norms, I wanted his cause of
beatification to move forward with reasonable haste. And now the
longed-for day has come; it came quickly because this is what was
pleasing to the Lord: John Paul II is blessed!
I would like to
offer a cordial greeting to all of you who on this happy occasion have
come in such great numbers to Rome from all over the world – cardinals,
patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches, brother bishops and
priests, official delegations, ambassadors and civil authorities,
consecrated men and women and lay faithful, and I extend that greeting
to all those who join us by radio and television.
Today is the
Second Sunday of Easter, which Blessed John Paul II entitled Divine
Mercy Sunday. The date was chosen for today’s celebration because, in
God’s providence, my predecessor died on the vigil of this feast. Today
is also the first day of May, Mary’s month, and the liturgical memorial
of Saint Joseph the Worker. All these elements serve to enrich our
prayer, they help us in our pilgrimage through time and space; but in
heaven a very different celebration is taking place among the angels and
saints! Even so, God is but one, and one too is Christ the Lord, who
like a bridge joins earth to heaven. At this moment we feel closer than
ever, sharing as it were in the liturgy of heaven.
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (Jn 20:29).
In today’s Gospel Jesus proclaims this beatitude: the beatitude of
faith. For us, it is particularly striking because we are gathered to
celebrate a beatification, but even more so because today the one
proclaimed blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one who was called
to confirm his brethren in the faith. John Paul II is blessed because
of his faith, a strong, generous and apostolic faith. We think at once
of another beatitude: “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh
and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (Mt 16:17).
What did our heavenly Father reveal to Simon? That Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of the living God. Because of this faith, Simon becomes
Peter, the rock on which Jesus can build his Church. The eternal
beatitude of John Paul II, which today the Church rejoices to proclaim,
is wholly contained in these sayings of Jesus: “Blessed are you, Simon”
and “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!”
It is the beatitude of faith, which John Paul II also received as a
gift from God the Father for the building up of Christ’s Church.
Our
thoughts turn to yet another beatitude, one which appears in the Gospel
before all others. It is the beatitude of the Virgin Mary, the Mother
of the Redeemer. Mary, who had just conceived Jesus, was told by Saint
Elizabeth: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment
of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (Lk 1:45). The beatitude
of faith has its model in Mary, and all of us rejoice that the
beatification of John Paul II takes place on this first day of the month
of Mary, beneath the maternal gaze of the one who by her faith
sustained the faith of the Apostles and constantly sustains the faith of
their successors, especially those called to occupy the Chair of Peter.
Mary does not appear in the accounts of Christ’s resurrection, yet
hers is, as it were, a continual, hidden presence: she is the Mother to
whom Jesus entrusted each of his disciples and the entire community. In
particular we can see how Saint John and Saint Luke record the
powerful, maternal presence of Mary in the passages preceding those read
in today’s Gospel and first reading. In the account of Jesus’ death,
Mary appears at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25), and at the
beginning of the Acts of the Apostles she is seen in the midst of the
disciples gathered in prayer in the Upper Room (Acts 1:14).
Today’s
second reading also speaks to us of faith. Saint Peter himself, filled
with spiritual enthusiasm, points out to the newly-baptized the reason
for their hope and their joy. I like to think how in this passage, at
the beginning of his First Letter, Peter does not use language of
exhortation; instead, he states a fact. He writes: “you rejoice”, and he adds: “you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet 1:6,
8-9). All these verbs are in the indicative, because a new reality has
come about in Christ’s resurrection, a reality to which faith opens the
door. “This is the Lord’s doing”, says the Psalm (118:23), and “it is
marvelous in our eyes”, the eyes of faith.
Dear brothers and
sisters, today our eyes behold, in the full spiritual light of the risen
Christ, the beloved and revered figure of John Paul II. Today his name
is added to the host of those whom he proclaimed saints and blesseds
during the almost twenty-seven years of his pontificate, thereby
forcefully emphasizing the universal vocation to the heights of the
Christian life, to holiness, taught by the conciliar Constitution on the
Church Lumen Gentium. All of us, as members of the people of
God – bishops, priests, deacons, laity, men and women religious – are
making our pilgrim way to the heavenly homeland where the Virgin Mary
has preceded us, associated as she was in a unique and perfect way to
the mystery of Christ and the Church. Karol Wojtyła took part in the
Second Vatican Council, first as an auxiliary Bishop and then as
Archbishop of Kraków. He was fully aware that the Council’s decision to
devote the last chapter of its Constitution on the Church to Mary meant
that the Mother of the Redeemer is held up as an image and model of
holiness for every Christian and for the entire Church. This was the
theological vision which Blessed John Paul II discovered as a young man
and subsequently maintained and deepened throughout his life. A vision
which is expressed in the scriptural image of the crucified Christ with
Mary, his Mother, at his side. This icon from the Gospel of John
(19:25-27) was taken up in the episcopal and later the papal
coat-of-arms of Karol Wojtyła: a golden cross with the letter “M” on the
lower right and the motto “Totus tuus”, drawn from the
well-known words of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in which
Karol Wojtyła found a guiding light for his life: “Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria – I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart” (Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 266).
In
his Testament, the new Blessed wrote: “When, on 16 October 1978, the
Conclave of Cardinals chose John Paul II, the Primate of Poland,
Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, said to me: ‘The task of the new Pope will be
to lead the Church into the Third Millennium’”. And the Pope added: “I
would like once again to express my gratitude to the Holy Spirit for
the great gift of the Second Vatican Council, to which, together with
the whole Church – and especially with the whole episcopate – I feel
indebted. I am convinced that it will long be granted to the new
generations to draw from the treasures that this Council of the
twentieth century has lavished upon us. As a Bishop who took part in
the Council from the first to the last day, I desire to entrust this
great patrimony to all who are and will be called in the future to put
it into practice. For my part, I thank the Eternal Shepherd, who has
enabled me to serve this very great cause in the course of all the years
of my Pontificate”. And what is this “cause”? It is the same one that
John Paul II presented during his first solemn Mass in Saint Peter’s
Square in the unforgettable words: “Do not be afraid! Open, open wide
the doors to Christ!” What the newly-elected Pope asked of everyone, he
was himself the first to do: society, culture, political and economic
systems he opened up to Christ, turning back with the strength of a
titan – a strength which came to him from God – a tide which appeared
irreversible. By his witness of faith, love and apostolic courage,
accompanied by great human charisma, this exemplary son of Poland helped
believers throughout the world not to be afraid to be called Christian,
to belong to the Church, to speak of the Gospel. In a word: he helped
us not to fear the truth, because truth is the guarantee of liberty. To
put it even more succinctly: he gave us the strength to believe in
Christ, because Christ is Redemptor hominis, the Redeemer of man. This was the theme of his first encyclical, and the thread which runs though all the others.
When
Karol Wojtyła ascended to the throne of Peter, he brought with him a
deep understanding of the difference between Marxism and Christianity,
based on their respective visions of man. This was his message: man is
the way of the Church, and Christ is the way of man. With this message,
which is the great legacy of the Second Vatican Council and of its
“helmsman”, the Servant of God Pope Paul VI, John Paul II led the People
of God across the threshold of the Third Millennium, which thanks to
Christ he was able to call “the threshold of hope”. Throughout the long
journey of preparation for the great Jubilee he directed Christianity
once again to the future, the future of God, which transcends history
while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly reclaimed for
Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered
before Marxism and the ideology of progress. He restored to
Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in history
in an “Advent” spirit, in a personal and communitarian existence
directed to Christ, the fullness of humanity and the fulfillment of all
our longings for justice and peace.
Finally, on a more personal
note, I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many
years with Blessed Pope John Paul II. I had known him earlier and had
esteemed him, but for twenty-three years, beginning in 1982 after he
called me to Rome to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, I was at his side and came to revere him all the more. My
own service was sustained by his spiritual depth and by the richness of
his insights. His example of prayer continually impressed and edified
me: he remained deeply united to God even amid the many demands of his
ministry. Then too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord
gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever a “rock”, as
Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close union with
Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the
world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical
strength declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the
vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with
Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Eucharist.
Blessed
are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we
implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God’s people. Amen.
Biography (Official Vatican)
Biography (BBC)
Biography (BBC Religion)
Page refreshed : 15th June 2017