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!”
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“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 …”
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“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 …”
Eyewitness: How John Paul made an Italian-American “part Polish”
Reuters Vatican correspondent Philip Pullella covered the late Pope John Paul for almost all of the pontiff’s 26-year papacy and followed him on most of his many voyages around the world. In keeping with news agency tradition, his reports focused on the pope and rarely if ever mentioned his own feelings as he followed him year in and year out. On the day that John Paul was beatified, we want to break that tradition and give readers Phil’s personal view of his experience covering the Polish pope.*
By Philip Pullella
Although I was born in Italy of Italian parents and raised in New York, I consider myself “part Polish”. This is thanks to the man beatified on May 1. But perhaps even more than my proximity to the late Pope John Paul, it was my closeness to his countrymen and countrywomen that left an indelible mark on my soul. And I don’t mean soul in the religious sense, but in the poetic sense. I have no Polish blood, but I have a part-Polish soul. Of this I have no doubt.
My favorite part of John Paul’s papacy were without question the trips to Poland. I accompanied him on the papal plane on all of the trips except the first in 1979, when I was still in New York.
In Italy, the pope seemed at times to be suffocating. He seemed at times to be forced to be an ITALIAN, which he clearly was not. In Poland, he was Polish.
And that made all the difference both for him and his countrymen. His visits transformed him like a medicine that cures a sick person, and if I can take the liberty of being a bit irreverent, like a wine lover who tastes a fine, rare vintage after a period of being forced to drink a cheap brew.
My trips with the pope to Poland are like milestones of its history in the late 20th century. My first was in 1983 when the country was in the grip of martial law. I remember my translator had a small child and she was worried. Times were tight. Money was tight. I went into one of those notorious “dollar stores”, and bought her some things for her son, chocolate and things like that. She was reluctant, embarrassed. I told her “just tell him it’s from an American uncle in Italy”.
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.
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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.
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Factbox: Roman Catholic Church’s saint-making process
The Vatican is preparing to elevate the late Pope John Paul II one step closer to sainthood Sunday.
Here are some key facts about the canonization process by which the Roman Catholic Church makes a saint:
* THE PROCESS:
– Under normal Church rules, five years must pass after a person dies before the procedure for sainthood can even begin. Despite a person’s reputation of holiness during his or her life, the process cannot begin until after death.
– The reigning pope has the authority to waive the five-year waiting period. Pope Benedict put John Paul on the fast track in May 2005, just two months after his predecessor died.
– When the local bishop begins the “cause,” the candidate for sainthood receives the title “Servant of God.” A “postulator” is then appointed to help gather information about the candidate. The postulator also reviews nearly every word known to have been written or spoken by the candidate.
– One miracle is required after a candidate’s death for the cause to move on to beatification. The miracle must be the result of a person praying to the candidate for intercession with God. Miracles are usually the healing of medical conditions that doctors are at a loss to explain.
Scoditti U, Rustichelli P, Calzetti S: Spontaneous hemiballism and disappearance of parksinsonism following contralateral lenticular lacunar infarct. Ital J Neurol Sci 10:575-577, 1989
Timeline: Life and times of Pope John Paul II
The Vatican is preparing to elevate the late pontiff, John Paul II, one step closer to sainthood on Sunday in a ceremony of beatification. Here is a timeline of the pontificate of John Paul.
October 16, 1978 – Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow in Poland elected as first non-Italian pope in 455 years.
June 2-10, 1979 – Returns to his communist-ruled homeland, a trip seen as a factor in the rise of the Solidarity movement.
May 13, 1981 – Shot by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca in St Peter’s Square. Surgery saves his life.
April 13, 1986 – First pope since the times of the apostles to visit a synagogue; calls Jews “our beloved elder brothers.”
December 1, 1989 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visits the Vatican and invites Pope John Paul to make a trip to the Soviet Union, an offer the pope was never able to take up because of resistance by the powerful Russian Orthodox Church.
April 21, 1990 – Flies to Czechoslovakia to hail collapse of communism with President Vaclav Havel.
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).
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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.”
Russian Orthodox Church’s Kirill on ecumenism, via Wikileaks
Some interesting comments on Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, back in April 2008 when he was still Metropolitan Kirill, in a cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow published by Wikileaks:
¶8. (C) Kirill seemed to be in good health was preoccupied as always with the, in his view, excessive emphasis on the individual in the West, and stressed the need to harmonize traditional human rights concerns with “morality and ethics.” Economic progress had been a two-edged sword for Russia, Kirill thought. With prosperity, Russians had “lost something” and Kirill, who is Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, pointed to less prosperous Smolensk as “better preserved” than Moscow or St. Petersburg.
¶9. (C) Kirill spoke highly of a UN-sponsored effort to bridge the gap between East and West by seeking an alliance of civilizations. Kirill was attempting to interest the UN in his efforts to sponsor ecumenical dialogue especially, he said, in the Middle East. As he has in past conversations, Kirill contrasted Roman Catholic Pope Benedict favourably with his predecessor John Paul II, and again held out the prospect of significant improvement in Russian Orthodox – Roman Catholic relations. Also on the ecumenical front, Kirill reported to the Ambassador efforts, via the Russian Orthodox Church of America and the National Council of Churches, to reach out to Protestant denominations in the U.S.
Although the three great monotheist faiths of the world — that is, Jews, Christians, and Muslims — seem to clash and grate against each other, there is an oasis of peace and agreement and sanctuary among them that can be found in the immortal account of the Prophet Elijah. All three of these enormous religions believe in and respect and honor the prophet Elijah. A new motion picture has just been made (fresh out of Hollywood) of the life of Elijah. This wonderful movie is called “Blast and Whisper”. Check it out on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrJ0-4UN7 uQ
Check it out on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/BLAST-AND- WHISPER/322296232152?v=info
Check out the press release at:
http://www.wdcmedia.com/newsArticle.php? ID=4174
Check it out on IMDb at:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2492800/
Pope dismays anti-Mafia activists on Sicily visit with scant mention of crime mob
Pope Benedict said on Sunday the Mafia represented “a path of death” that Sicily’s young should shun but he dismayed activists who said he was too timid and should have given the crime group a moral hammering.
Benedict, making his first visit to Sicily as pope, celebrated an open-air mass for more than 200,000 people near the Sicilian capital’s port and then later addressed a rally of tens of thousands of young people.
The pope mentioned the Mafia only in that sentence of his two-page speech to the young people, which was centered on family values, and in a speech to bishops in which he mentioned that a priest, Pino Puglisi, had been killed by the mob in 1993.
“While it is good that he used the word, I don’t understand this timid way of approaching the issue,” Rita Borsellino, whose brother Paolo, a leading anti-Mafia magistrate, was killed by a Mafia car bomb in Palermo in 1992, told Reuters. “I was expecting him to develop the theme much more, especially in his address to the young people,” she said.
On a visit to the Sicilian city of Agrigento in 1993, John Paul improvised a scathing, specific attack on the Mafia which has gone down in anti-Mafia history and is etched in the memory of many Sicilians.
Speaking in a raised voice and with a clenched fist, John Paul thundered against Mafiosi, warning them directly that unless they “converted” to good, they would one day be subjected to God’s judgment for their blood letting and misdeeds.
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