Excerpts of Pope Benedict’s homily at beatification of John Paul
The late Pope John Paul moved a major step closer to sainthood on Sunday at a ceremony that drew more than a million people, the largest crowd in Rome since his funeral six years ago. Here are excerpts from the Vatican’s official translation of Pope Benedict’s homily at the beatification mass:
“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 …
“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!”
——-
“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 …”
——
“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 …”
Pope John Paul beatified before huge crowd at the Vatican
The late Pope John Paul moved a major step closer to sainthood on Sunday at a ceremony that drew about a million and half people, the largest crowd in Rome since his funeral six years ago. “From now on Pope John Paul shall be called ‘blessed,’” Pope Benedict, wearing white and gold robes, proclaimed in Latin, establishing that his predecessor’s feast day would be October 22, the day of the inauguration of John Paul’s pontificate in 1978.
To the cheers of the crowd, a tapestry showing a smiling John Paul was unveiled after Benedict read the proclamation. St Peter’s Square was packed and the crowd stretched as far back as the Tiber River, more than half a km away. The devotees, many carrying national flags and singing, moved toward the Vatican area from all directions from before dawn to get a good spot for the Mass.
Police estimated the crowd in the Vatican area at about 1.5 million people. Many camped out during the night in the square, which was bedecked with posters of the late pope and one of his most famous sayings, “Do not be afraid!”
In his homily, Benedict noted that the late Pope, whom he praised as having had “the strength of a titan” and who gave millions of people “the strength to believe,” had blessed crowds thousands of times from his window overlooking the same square. “Bless us now,” Benedict said.
.
Pilgrims make long, arduous trips to fete John Paul
For Janusc Skibinski, there was only one place to be on the day the late Pope John Paul took the last step before sainthood. The Polish customs agent drove his family 29 hours from their hometown on the border with Belarus and queued with hundreds of thousands of people through the night so he could make it into St. Peter’s Square for the beatification of Poland’s most famous native son.
Clutching a red-and-white Polish flag, he was among tens of thousands of devotees from Poland, flanked by pilgrims from all over the world in the biggest crowd in the Vatican since John Paul’s funeral six years ago.
“He was our beloved pope. He always knew how to lead and be our guide, he taught us how to live and he taught us how to love,” said Skibinski, 40, waiting with his wife and two children for stewards to allow them to move into the square. “We were at the funeral and we just had to be here to see him beatified,” he said.
By the time the weary but happy Skibinskis made it into the square, more than a million people had gathered in the area around the Vatican. At the mass, John Paul’s successor Pope Benedict pronounced a Latin formula proclaiming one of the most popular popes in history a “blessed” of the Church, before a tapestry showing the late pope smiling was unveiled to the applauding crowds.
“It’s right to be here, it’s a duty,” said Italian pensioner Renzo Rizzi, who traveled from the northern city of Milan and queued since the early hours to guarantee his spot.
.
Pope John Paul II – a halo too soon?
Is Pope John Paul II approaching his halo too fast? As the Vatican prepares to elevate the late pontiff one step closer to sainthood this Sunday, the Catholic world is caught up with beatification fever.
Rome is festooned with posters of the former pope on buses and lamp posts as the city where he was bishop for 27 years awaits one of the largest crowds since his funeral in 2005, when millions came to pay tribute. At least several hundred thousand people are expected at the mass in St Peter’s Square where his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, will pronounce a Latin formula declaring one of the most popular popes in history a “blessed” of the Church.
The frenetic preparations in Rome, in John Paul’s native Poland and around the world, have matched the buildup for Friday’s royal wedding in London and drowned out the voices of a minority of Catholics asking “Why the rush?.”
The answer depends on the definition of sainthood. “The official judgment of the church is catching up with the spontaneous judgment of the people of the church,” said American theologian and papal biographer George Weigel. “What’s happening is the acknowledgement of a Christian life nobly lived and one from which we can all take inspiration,” Weigel, who knew the pope, told Reuters.
At John Paul’s funeral in 2005, the crowd chanted the now famous phrase “Santo Subito” (Make him a saint now).
.
Pope’s Jesus book raps religious violence, explains exoneration of Jews
Pope Benedict has condemned violence committed in God’s name and personally exonerated Jews of responsibility for Jesus’ death in his latest book, released on Thursday. The book, the second in a planned three-part series on the life of Jesus, is a detailed, highly theological and academic recounting of the last week in Jesus’ life.
Publishers have printed 1.2 million copies of the book in seven languages. A blaze of international publicity included teleconferences with the media in several countries.
In one section, Benedict writes that there can be no justification for violence carried out in God’s name, an assertion as applicable to Islamist militancy today as to violence that the Catholic Church itself committed in the past as it spread the faith.
“The cruel consequences of religiously motivated violence are only too evident to us all,” the pope writes. “Violence does not build up the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity.”
The part of the book that may have the most far-reaching effect on Catholic relations with other religions is one in which the pontiff details the events of Christ’s trial before Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and his sentencing to death. In that section, he repudiates the concept of collective guilt of the Jews at the time and of their progeny for Jesus’ death, a charge that has haunted Christian-Jewish relations for centuries.
It was the first time a pope had made such a detailed dissection and close comparison of various New Testament accounts and concluded that there was no basis to the charge, first officially repudiated in a Church document in 1965.
Read the full story here. Here’s a Reuters video on the book, with my interview with Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni and short explanation of the argument the pope makes in the book.
Pope Benedict not fully welcome at German parliament next year
A rousing welcome in Berlin it may not be.
Pope Benedict’s invitation to address German parliament during his visit to his homeland next September 22-25 has not sat well with some members of the opposition. Volker Beck, the Green party floor leader, has protested that inviting a religious leader to address parliament, the Bundestag, is unprecedented and the wrong place to speak about religion.
“The German Bundestag is justifiably cautious when inviting a foreign head of state,” Beck told the German daily Die Welt. “Firstly the pope is the head of a religion and secondly the head of a state.”
Only foreign heads of state are invited to address the Bundestag. Earlier this year Israeli President Shimon Peres spoke to German parliament. Benedict is a head of state, so he fits the qualification, but Beck argued that he was first and foremost a religious leader and a head of state after that. He added that he didn’t know which other religious leaders would then need to be invited to address parliament in the interest of religious diversity if Benedict speaks.
Germany’s Christian Social Union — the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats — said that Beck’s opposition was simply opposition grandstanding. Bavaria, a Catholic stronghold, is also where the pope was raised and served as an archbishop in Munich.
More pressure, however, could come from outside groups, especially those opposed to the Vatican’s policies toward homosexuality. “The invitation for the pope to speak in the German parliament is completely incomprehensible,” Manfred Burns, the spokesman of the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany, said in a statement. “The Bundestag genuflects before a religious leader … who refuses to acknowledge our constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination.”
from UK News:
Pope’s visit to UK runs into murmurings
Are preparations for Pope Benedict's visit to England and Scotland on track? Well, sort of.
The papal visit in September will be the first since Pope John Paul II's pastoral visit in 1982 and the first ever papal state visit to these shores.
But there have been murmurings in the national press that things may not be going quite according to plan - and we're not just talking government slip-ups.
It is true that most of the nods and winks have come from the Daily Telegraph - or in the case of its blogger Damian Thompson, the bulk of the shouting.
But a public relations exercise this week by the leader of the Roman Catholics in England and Wales, the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, left this reporter slightly uneasy.
It was arranged to discuss the Archbishop's booklet "Heart Speaks unto Heart", aimed at educating officials and Britain's 5 million Catholic worshippers about the significance of the Pope's four-day visit between Sept. 16 and 19.
But his handling of questions on whether the project was in danger of overspend, with a possible change of venues, was rather coy.
-
Resident FaithWorld Expert
-
