Pope John Paul’s beatification stirs pride and hope in Polish Church
In the sleepy town of Wadowice in southern Poland, they are sprucing up the main square and renovating the house where its most famous son, the late Pope John Paul II, was born as Karol Wojtyla 91 years ago. Wadowice, its streets decked out with stalls hawking kitsch papal memorabilia, hopes John Paul’s beatification on May 1 — the last step before sainthood — will lure even more pilgrims to the modest two-storey house which is now a museum.
The Catholic Church here and across Poland also hopes the beatification in Rome, bestowing on John Paul the title of ‘blessed’, will rejuvenate an institution whose image has been somewhat tarnished in his native land by political squabbles and a lack of charismatic leadership since the Pope’s death in 2005.
But even some devout Catholics fret that beatification, with all its commercial razzmatazz, may fail to get Poles thinking more deeply about their faith and the late Pope’s teachings. “About half a million people are already visiting Wadowice every year. Now we want to give them a modern, interactive experience of John Paul II,” said Father Pawel Danek, head of the museum, explaining plans to expand it tenfold to 1,000 square meters with the help of private and public donations.
Churches around Poland — where more than 90 percent of people say they are Catholic and some 40 percent attend mass every Sunday — will stage all-night vigils before the beatification. Tens of thousands of Poles will be among an estimated 300,000 converging on Rome for the ceremony.
“It is six years since Pope John Paul II left us, but he only appears to be absent. He is still present on the paths of faith, hope and love of the people of God,” said Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who served as the Pope’s private secretary at the Vatican during his 1978-2005 reign. “We hope the longed-for beatification will deepen this presence, inspiring future generations to follow his ideal of a Christian life.”
Read the full story by Gabriela Baczynska here.
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Vatican invites all to John Paul beatification, cites “ethical” Rome hotel prices
The Vatican has urged the faithful not to let reports of huge crowds or unscrupulous hoteliers deter them from coming to Rome for the beatification of the late Pope John Paul on May 1. “I invite everyone to come. Rome is ready. Don’t be afraid of coming or of inviting people,” said Father Caesar Atuire on Tuesday.
The Vatican has begun the countdown to what will be the biggest event in the Italian capital since the death of the charismatic and highly popular pope in 2005, when millions of people came to view his body or attend his funeral. Vatican officials expect at least 300,000 people — including tens of thousands from his native Poland — to come to Rome for the three days of events during which he will be declared a “blessed,” the last step before sainthood.
The Vatican has already warned the faithful to beware of fraudsters, particularly on the Internet, who are selling tickets to the beatification ceremony. No tickets will be necessary for any of the ceremonies.
Vatican officials told a news conference that they had stipulated an “ethical pact” with the Rome hoteliers association in which members promised not to jack up prices for the period of the events, when rooms are expected to be scarce. There have been numerous media reports of skyrocketing prices, particularly in hotels in Rome’s historic center or in the Vatican area on the other side of the Tiber River.
Officials said the crowd would be marshaled by police and hundreds of volunteers. Giant television screens will be placed around Rome, 14 of them alone on Via della Conciliazione, the boulevard leading from the Tiber to St Peter’s Square.
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Pope John Paul’s coffin to be exhumed for faithful
Faithful attending the beatification of Pope John Paul in Rome will be able to pray before his coffin, which will be exhumed for the event, the Vatican said on Friday.
The Vatican also warned the faithful around the world not to fall prey to fraudsters, particularly on the Internet, who are selling tickets to the beatification ceremony on May 1.
“For the beatification Mass of Pope John Paul II, as made clear from the outset, no tickets are required,” the Vatican said.
It said people should also steer clear of tour operators promising to procure tickets as part of their packages.
Italian authorities and Church officials say perhaps more than a million people may attend the mass at which John Paul, who died in 2005, will be declared a blessed of the Church and move one step closer to sainthood.
The ceremony in St Peter’s Square, one of several over three days, will hark back to the funeral of the charismatic pope, which was one of the biggest media events of the new century.
John Paul’s wooden coffin will be exhumed from its current place in the crypts below St Peter’s Basilica.
Desecration of human remains, in my opinion. The faithful don’t need to see the actual coffin holding the remains…it’s rather macabre to dig up anyone’s coffin, Pope or not. It’s far better to leave his bones undisturbed and I question the purpose and the necessity to remove him to a new resting place because he’s beatified. And, you can bet his coffin will be opened secretly by the Vatican to determine whether or not his body shows signs of natural decomposition or not. If not, they can then claim a miracle to support their quest to officially declare the Pope a Saint. Modern day gravediggers are having a field day in their quest to prove or disprove one thing or another by digging up ancient graves, and it should be against the law to exhume remains for religious purposes or otherwise.
French nun says Pope John Paul gave her ‘second birth’
The French Catholic nun who credits the late Pope John Paul with curing her of Parkinson’s disease said on Monday her sudden recovery came just as she was about to quit working because of her ailment.
Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, 49, said she woke up in June 2005, two months after the Polish-born pope had died, suddenly cured of the disease she had suffered from for four years.
“When I woke up, I felt I was not the same,” Sister Marie told a news conference at the bishop’s office in this southern French city. “There was no more heaviness in my muscles, I could move normally. For me it was a new birth, a second birth.”
Her superior said the nun had told her the previous evening that she could no longer work in their order’s maternity clinic because of her worsening health. “I asked her to take a pencil and write John Paul’s name,” Mother Marie Thomas told journalists. “I saw the writing was very messy and illegible. I said to myself there was nothing left to do but hope.”
John Paul’s successor, Pope Benedict, approved a decree last Friday declaring her healing a miracle and attributing it to the late pontiff, clearing the way for him to be beatified on May 1.
Read the full story here by Jean-François Rosnoblet or his original report in French Soeur Marie Simon-Pierre raconte sa “seconde naissance.”
Seats still going for pope’s visit to Britain this week
Thousands of seats have yet to be filled for Pope Benedict’s public masses in England and Scotland this week, a far cry from the warm welcome his predecessor received nearly 30 years ago.
The pope arrives in Scotland on Thursday on a state visit at a time when the Church is struggling with a global sex-abuse scandal and hostility from one of Europe’s most secular nations.
The current pope has had a hard time inspiring the same enthusiasm as charismatic Pope John Paul II did during the first papal visit to Britain in 1982, when hundreds of thousands turned out to see him.
Early starts, strict security, the need to travel in pre-organized groups and the cost of entry have been cited as the reasons why people might not be attending the public events.
Sexual abuse scandals may dent wealthy Catholic order’s funding
The Legionaries of Christ, a conservative Roman Catholic order that once had absolute and high-level Vatican support, has been disgraced by revelations its charismatic Mexican founder led a double life that included abusing young boys and fathering children. Now it faces the prospect of a second serious setback as the wealthy donors who helped build it into an influential movement in recent decades consider whether to go on contributing to such a shamed organization.
Combined with damning findings from a Vatican probe last month, the future of the order is in doubt.
Osvaldo Moreno, a spokesman for the Legion, said it was too soon to say if donations were dropping off and no significant change had been detected. But he admitted the global media attention on the seedy details of founder Father Marcial Maciel‘s sexual escapades was not helping.
“There will be a significant reduction (in money raised) and competitors like the Opus Dei will benefit,” Fernando M. Gonzalez, who has written books on Maciel and is one of the leading scholars on the Legion, told Reuters.
Read the full story by Mica Rosenberg and Anahi Rama here.
Papal envoy to run scandal-plagued Legion of Christ Catholic order
Pope Benedict will appoint a special envoy to run and reform an influential conservative Roman Catholic priestly order whose late founder was discovered to have been a sexual molester and to have fathered at least one child.
A Vatican statement on Saturday (here in Italian original and English translation) said the pope would also name a commission to review the constitution, or founding principles, of The Legionaries of Christ, whose founder Father Marcial Maciel, led a double life for decades.
The statement said that while Maciel was guilty of “grave and objectively immoral behavior” and had managed to hoodwink many people, most members today were filled with “sincere zeal” and had been oblivious to what it called his “real crimes.”
Maciel, who founded the order in 1941 and who died in 2008 at the age of 87, was a cult figure within the order and for years had the ear of the late Pope John Paul II despite allegations that he had abused young male seminarians and fathered at least one child in his native Mexico and perhaps two other children by another woman.
Uncertain leadership in Vatican as abuse crisis rages
When countries are threatened or institutions are in trouble, they look to their leaders to show the way out of the crisis.
The Vatican is in trouble, its moral authority sapped by mounting allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests in the past and cover ups by bishops supervising them.
But strong leadership from the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church is hard to discern. Pope Benedict rarely mentions the crisis and some aides have made things worse with comments that are mostly defensive and sometimes offend.
Catholic leaders argue the Church is not like secular bodies such as governments or companies, which is true. But it does live in the world and is judged by its legal standards when clergy commit crimes or the hierarchy covers them up.
George Abela, the Catholic president of the very Catholic island state of Malta, stressed this in his welcoming address to the visiting pope on Saturday when he spoke of priests who “unfortunately go astray”.
“It is therefore the Church and even the State’s duty to work hand in hand … to curb cases of abuse so that justice will not only be done but seen to be done,” he declared.
Benedict’s fullest statement on the crisis, his March 20 letter to the Irish, expressed shame and remorse and sharply criticised Ireland’s bishops over their handling of abuse cases. But he neither dismissed bishops nor proposed concrete reforms.
these events have nothing to do with a man’s natural sexual orientation. in our world there are more girls than boys getting groped by old pervs. the only reason we see boy-centered allegations here is because there aren’t girls to grope in the church.
the church has invented plenty of colorful language to snuff out and control the population, such as the above drivel written by that old crank leviticus.
funny that now, after centuries of fabricating fear and nonsense about human sexuality, their hateful tactics are blowing back in their faces under their own roof, where they have been hypocritically indulging themselves in the very pleasures that they admonish the people to deny.
it is time disband the irrelevant catholic church, turn the vatican into a campus for the care of the old, poor, and sick, to better suit their historic claims of compassion etc. and rewrite the ‘bible’ yet again to reflect contemporary paths to enlightenment for all people everywhere.
Undaunted cardinal says John Paul backed his praise for hiding abuser
A former Vatican cardinal who congratulated a French bishop for hiding a sexually abusive priest has said he acted with the approval of the late Pope John Paul, a Spanish newspaper reported on Saturday.
Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the Vatican official in charge of priests around the world when he praised the French bishop in 2001, dragged the Polish pope into the controversy during a conference in the Spanish city of Murcia. His comment came after a Vatican spokesman indirectly confirmed that a 2001 letter to the bishop posted on a French website on Thursday was authentic and was proof the Vatican was right to tighten up its procedures on sex abuse cases that year.
By invoking John Paul, Castrillon Hoyos appeared to up the ante in a subtle Vatican power struggle over who was to blame for past failures to deal effectively with the abuse cases whose revelations in recent months have shaken the Church. Vatican officials had no official reaction on Saturday.
“After consulting the pope … I wrote a letter to the bishop congratulating him as a model of a father who does not hand over his sons,” the daily La Verdad (here in Spanisn) quoted Castrillon Hoyos as telling the conference on Friday, to a round of applause from the assembled prelates, priests and lay people.”The Holy Father authorized me to send this letter to all bishops in the world and publish it on the internet.”
Castrillon Hoyos, a Colombian who retired from Vatican service last year, argued on CNN’s Spanish-language television last week that temporarily suspending abusive priests and then quietly reassigning them elsewhere was not a cover-up. Austen Ivereigh at America magazine has English quotes in this excellent analysis.
The retired cardinal seems to be in complete denial about the problem. What do you think about his statements?
Here is the CNN interview in Spanish:
Sad to say it looks like the worlds lay catholics will just have to wait for our illustrious Vatican prelates to stop their whinning, finger pointing, media-blaming games. Then, maybe, we can all work together as Church to figure out a solution to this self-inficted nightmare.
Agca says he is a messiah who will write a “perfect Bible”
Mehmet Ali Agca, Pope John Paul’s would-be assassin due to be released from prison on Monday, has answered a set of questions put to him by Reuters through his lawyers. Earlier on Wednesday, his lawyers issued a hand-written letter to journalists in which he called for a new “American Empire.” Our later news story on his answers to our questions highlights his stated desire to visit the late pope’s tomb in Saint Peter’s Basilica. The statement went on to call on Pope Benedict to announce the end of the world and say he would prove he was “Agca the Messiah” and would write the “perfect Bible.” Agca’s answers are rambling and bizarre. Since we’re bound to hear more from him when he’s released, here’s the complete text of the Q&A to give a fuller view of his current thinking. The Reuters bureau in Istanbul translated it from the original Turkish.
1. How are you feeling after your many years in prison?
“For around thirty years I have been staying in cells on my own. I experienced hell on earth. But in spite of everything I am well. I feel good in myself both physically and psychologically.”
2. Have your beliefs changed during your time in prison and what have you learned from your experience?
“I have read at least a thousand books, most of them scientific, during my time in prison. I have experienced great change and development as a result of a synthesis of experience and knowledge. I have understood world history. I have understand the nature of humanity.
But I have not understood this at all: How can it be that billions of people can believe that one person can hold a third of the millions of galaxies in his hand, even if he is the MESSIAH. The TRINITY says that space billions of light years away is in the hands of the MESSIAH JESUS. Is this possible? Furthermore there is not a word of the TRINTY in either the Old or the New Testaments. If people could have asked these questions would the Monster Nazi mentality have easily come to power and carried out genocide? I promise $1 million to anyone who can point to a single use of the word TRINITY in the BIBLE.”
3. What do you want to do when you leave prison and where do you want to live? Do you want to get married?
Yes he can write perfect bible in consultation with Mr. Muamer Kadafi, ruler of Libya. These people have their own version of “Islamic Bible” not the Holy Bible which we read and follow “Love your neighbor as yourself”
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