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	John Paul II Beatified in Rome By Eric Reguly Globe and Mail May 2, 2011 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/europe/john-paul-ii-beatified-in-rome/article2006043/ Vojtek Czarnik did not much care that John Paul II was beatified in near record time, or that his 27-year reign as head of the Catholic church was tainted by sexual abuse scandals. He came because he thought John Paul was a truly holy man, one who did not need miracles to prove his saintly status. "There is no question he was a saint the moment he died," he said in St. Peter's Square Sunday morning, a few hours before John Paul was declared "blessed" by Pope Benedict XVI, putting him one step short of official sainthood. Mr. Czarnik, 44, was one of an estimated 100,000 Poles who made the journey to Rome to witness the beatification of Poland's favourite son. Like many of the million or so pilgrims who attended the event that rivalled Friday's Royal wedding for pomp and ceremony, he went to extraordinary lengths to get there. He lives in New York, where he works as a construction company executive, flew to Rome with two of his children and arrived at the square Sunday at 5:30 a.m. to ensure he would have the best view of the ceremony that started at 10 a.m. Thomas Bourke, 49, a Irishman who works as a statistician at the European University Institute in Florence, was another visitor who considered John Paul already a saint and was willing to put aside the scandals out of love for a pope who revitalized Catholicism and embraced the world. "Everyone in the church could have done more [to prevent the scandals]," he said. "There is a great opportunity to move forward, and for the Church to become more vigilant and purify itself," he said. John Paul was beatified on a warm, sunny morning after a bout of wet weather that had made many pilgrims, some of whom had spent the night in sleeping bags outdoors, miserable. Their spirits lifted considerably as they marched at dawn to St. Peter's. The crowds in the square and in the streets nearby were the biggest since the funeral of John Paul � born Karol Jozef Wojtyla in 1920 � on April 8, 2005. That's when the crowded chanted "Santo Subito!" � sainthood now � putting Pope Benedict under enormous pressure to oil up the Vatican's beatification machinery. He waived the customary five-year waiting period after a candidate's death to launch the beatification process. For John Paul, the beatification came six years and 29 days after his death, making it two weeks faster than Mother Teresa's, though not as fast as St. Anthony of Padua. He became a saint in 1231, less than a year after his death, according to John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter. In Sunday's beatification homily, Pope Benedict implied the ultra-speedy beatification was triggered by popular demand. "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," he said. John Paul made more than 100 pastoral trips outside of Italy. Sister Maria Casey of Australia said John Paul's two visits to Australia were whirlwinds of activity that are still remembered fondly by Australian Catholics. In one day � Nov. 26, 1986, in Sydney � he had no fewer than 13 engagements. "He danced with young people on the stage in Sydney," she said. "There is great respect for John Paul in Australia." There is more than a few Catholics who think John Paul's beatification was, at best, premature, at worst, unwarranted, given the abuse scandals that erupted during his era. An abuse victims association called Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, criticized the "hasty drive to confer sainthood on the pontiff under whose reign most of the sex crimes and cover-ups happened." The most infamous case of abuse that erupted during John Paul's reign was that of the late Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionnaires of Christ order. John Paul was an admirer of Fr. Maciel and his conservative theology and even invited him on several overseas visits. In the mid-1990s, allegations were made that he sexually molested young seminarians, but he was not sanctioned until 2006, by Pope Benedict, a year after John Paul's death. Pope Benedict did not mention the abuse scandals in his homily. He chose to highlight his grace, his restoration of Christianity as the "true face as a religion of hope" and his "deep understanding of the difference between Marxism and Christianity," an apparent reference to his support for freeing Poland from Communism. But Pope Benedict has not denied that the abuse scandals have eroded the Church's moral authority. On April 20 at the Vatican, he said "Despite all our shame and mistakes, we shouldn't forget that even today there exist illustrious examples of faith." QUICKY SAINTHOOD Beatifications and canonizations, the two big steps in the Vatican's saint-making process, have been non-stop affairs under the current and previous popes. While cynics would call the saint tsunami a cheap marketing and publicity tool for the Church, others think the Church simply realizes that canonizing a saint many decades, even centuries, after his or her death is a wasted exercise. "John Paul II shortened the wait times because he wanted to give the people role models in their lifetimes," said Jacalyn Duffin, the hematologist and Queen's University medical history professor who took part in the Vatican's miracle-screening of Marie-Marguerite d'Youville of Montreal, who became Canada's first-native born saint in 1990. John Paul approved a record 1,338 beatifications over his nearly 27 years as pope, and performed 482 canonizations. Pope Benedict, who replaced John Paul in 2005, has had an even faster beatification pace, with 789 beatifications so far, or well more than twice as many per year as his predecessor. Pope Benedict's canonization pace, however, is far slower, with only 34 to date. In the 1980s, John Paul greatly simplified the sainthood process. Beatification waiting times came down and the Devil's Advocate, the canon lawyer employed by the Vatican to argue against a candidate's beatification, was eliminated. The number of miracles required to qualify sainthood was reduced. The new system requires one miracle for beatification and one for canonization, one fewer than the old system. The quickie beatifications do have crowd-pleasing effects, one of which is the occasional ability to see the "miraculee" � the recipient of a miracle � in the flesh. That happened on Saturday evening in Rome, when French nun Marie Simon-Pierre, who works at a maternity hospital in Paris, appeared on stage at the all-night vigil for John Paul at the Circus Maximus, the vast stadium used for chariot races during ancient times. Sister Marie had Parkinson's, the same disease that felled John Paul. She was diagnosed with the disease in 2001 and it became progressively worse, to the point she had trouble walking and her writing became illegible. Shortly after John Paul died in 2005, she and other sisters prayed to John Paul for a cure. Shortly thereafter, her symptoms disappeared, much to the surprise of her neurologist. The Vatican investigated � Ms. Duffin said such probes are rigorous and thorough � and determined there was no scientific explanation for the disappearance of Sister Marie's Parkinson's disease. That became the miracle required for John Paul's beatification. The betting is the second miracle, the one required for the canonization, won't take long to dredge up. Pope Benedict knows the billion-strong Catholic world wants John Paul to be declared a saint quickly.
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