A SAINT, one Catholic writer suggests, is “someone through whom we catch a glimpse of what God is like”. For many of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics, Pope John Paul II provided precisely that kind of inspiration and insight.
And yesterday his beatification by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, a first step to sainthood, was for them a profound source of joy, an important acknowledgment of the real presence in a genuinely holy man whose rich prayer life and strong mystical streak spoke inspiringly of profound faith. In his homily to an estimated million-strong crowd, Benedict said the first Polish Pope gave millions “the strength to believe” and “not to be afraid to be called Christian”.
But John Paul was also human, and fallible – sanctity is not perfection, an attribute only of God – and a man whose extraordinary legacy to the Catholic Church after 27 years at the helm, political, administrative as well as spiritual, is by no means simply positive. Not least, importantly, in its belated and half-hearted response to the tragedy of priestly child abuse and institutional cover-up. It is a reality implicitly acknowledged by Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints, when he spoke of the beatification not being a response to John Paul’s impact on the history of the church but rather to his “heroic” virtues, the way he lived the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love.
That context made the speed of beatification difficult for many, what reporter of Catholic affairs John Allen calls “a new land-speed record for arrival at the final stage before sainthood, beating Mother Teresa’s previous mark by 15 days”. You have to go back to 1232 and the canonisation of St Anthony of Padua, less than a year after his death, to find similar haste.
The Vatican, they say, normally thinks in centuries, but seems suddenly to have adapted to a very 21st century news cycle, in part to re-varnish its tarnished image. In that it was facilitated by John Paul himself who produced more beatifications (1,338) and canonisations (482) than all previous popes combined and who unblocked the road to sainthood to make it quicker and less adversarial. Indeed, it was remarkable to see Sister Marie Simone-Pierre, whose recovery from Parkinson’s was decreed to be the miracle necessary for his beatification, taking part in the ceremony yesterday. The word is that the second miracle required for canonisation may well already be in the pipeline undergoing scrutiny. At John Paul’s funeral the faithful chanted “Santo subito!” (“sainhood now!”). Maybe.