Another Step on Saintly Road, by Raymond J. De Souza, National Post, January 15, 2011

Another Step on Saintly Road

By Raymond J. De Souza
National Post
January 15, 2011

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/Another+step+saintly+road/4113151/story.html

The Church has accepted John Paul II's role in curing a French nun. Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/Another+step+saintly+road/4113151/story.html#ixzz1B81hFSBm

The long-awaited beatification of Pope John Paul II will take place on May 1. Except it is not long-awaited at all: Karol Wojtyla will be declared "blessed," the penultimate step to sainthood, in r ecord time.

It only seems long-awaited because the immense crowds who came to Rome after his death began speaking of him as "St. John Paul the Great" immediately. Those crowds, dominated by young people waiting more than 12 hours in line to pray before his body, already knew he was holy. They arrived at the funeral Mass with their signs and their chants: " Santo subito!" (Sainthood immediately!). In April 2005, the Church had already made up its mind John Paul would be raised to the honours of the altar. It took six years to do the paperwork.

In the painstaking business of declaring saints, six years and one month is rather immediate. First of all, the exhaustive investigation of a candidate's life cannot even begin until five years have passed since death. Pope Benedict XVI waived that rule for John Paul, as John Paul himself had done for Mother Teresa. She was beatified six years and six weeks after her death, meaning John Paul will hold the modern record. In early medieval and ancient times, saints were declared within even a few years of death if the reputation for sanctity was widespread.

The Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints clarified on Friday all the normal processes were followed in John Paul's case -- tens of thousands of pages of testimony gathered from witnesses, careful scrutiny of his writings, and the medical and theological examination of the miraculous healing in June 2005 of a French nun suffering from Parkinson's disease.

The beatification will take place in Rome on May 1--a delicious historical irony. Karol Wojtyla, the pope from behind the Iron Curtain, knew all too well the May Day parades of communists and their fellow travellers.

Within a dozen years of his election, the enslaved nations of Europe were free and the Soviet Union itself had ceased to exist. The Polish philosopher, poet and pope was the sine qua non of the revolution of conscience that brought down communism. He was a man who made history hurry toward a more humane future. That his own cause has proceeded at a historic pace is only suitable.

Yet May 1 was not chosen to dance on the communist grave, but rather in response to John Paul's deep spiritual and theological vision. He died on April 2, 2005, the liturgical feast of Divine Mercy, which falls this year on May 1.

"In his last book, he wrote: The limit imposed upon evil 'is ultimately Divine Mercy,' " Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, preached at John Paul's funeral Mass. "And reflecting on the assassination attempt, he said: 'In sacrificing himself for us all, Christ gave a new meaning to suffering, opening up a new dimension, a new order: the order of love."

The beatification news was greeted with widespread joy, but that joy was not universal.

Grumpy traditionalists who never liked the "John Paul Superstar" phenomenon will mutter it would be better to wait because, well, waiting is the traditional thing to do. Self-styled progressives who thought the legitimate reforms of the Second Vatican Council were the first step toward converting Roman Catholicism into Protestantism will avert their eyes from the exaltation of the man who buried their agenda. And even before Friday's announcement, a sexual abuse victims' group complained that John Paul's handling of that file besmirches his record.

It's a criticism that will be aired repeatedly over the next months. It is true that in the case of Marciel Macial, a serial abuser and spectacular fraudster, John Paul was deceived. Maciel deceived many others too, including his closest companions in the order he founded, the Legionaries of Christ.

On the broader issue, the first cases emerged in the late 1980s. In 2001, John Paul overhauled the entire legal apparatus for sexual abuse cases against priests, putting in place the system that to date has processed thousands of cases stretching back decades. The next year, therefore, when the scandals broke into the news, the principal reforms were already in place. That he should have acted more quickly is a fair criticism; that he did not act at all is an untruth.

The fundamental truth of John Paul's life -- that he was entirely dedicated to preaching the truth of Jesus Christ on an unprecedented stage -- was recognized even when he was alive. That judgment, made by the world and the Church, survives in death.