Not All Cheer Sainthood Path for Pope John Paul II, by Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA Today, January 17, 2011

Not All Cheer Sainthood Path for Pope John Paul II

By Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA Today
January 17, 2011

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2011/01/saint-pope-john-paul-sex-abuse-crisis/1

Is everyone cheering the race to sainthood for late Pope John Paul II? It would appear not.

Millions rushed the streets in Rome in April 2005, calling for "Sainthood' immediately for John Paul the day after his death.

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The Vatican responded by short-cutting its lengthy, dense procedures for proof that someone who has lived a life of exemplary holiness is now in heaven, whispering on humans' behalf in the ear of a miracle-working God.

Pope Benedict XVI erased the customary five-year-waiting period before a case for establishing sainthood (proof of two miracles due to the person's intercession) in John Paul's behalf. Five years and change later, the first miracle -- curing a nun of Parkinson's -- had been declared and a date set for John Paul's beatification, May 1.

But what else happened in those five years? The deep and ugly reaches of clergy sexual abuse, once treated by the Vatican as a uniquely American trouble, were revealed to be a global scourge. And the failures of various Vatican leaders, appointees of John Paul, to address and resolve the crisis were examined in headline after headline.

The global lay Catholic group We Are Church responded this weekend with dismay. In a press release, it calls John Paul a "spiritual authoritarian."

Their case is that he failed to confront the abuse scandal, that he squashed the Liberation Theology movement, that he shut off discussion on gender equality and that he did not recognize, as Pope Benedict XVI did recently, that use of condoms can be a moral choice for preventing the transmission of of HIV/AIDS.

David Gibson's Disputations column rounded up more critics along the same themes.

But it's doubtful there will be any Vatican reply to critics it ignored in Pope John Paul II's lifetime. No one is going to rain on the beatification parade.