Lauding John Paul II as a giant of 20th century history as well as a hero of the church, Pope Benedict XVI moved his towering predecessor one step closer to sainthood on Sunday in a celebratory Mass that drew more than a million people to Rome.
“He was witness to the tragic age of big ideologies, totalitarian regimes, and from their passing John Paul II embraced the harsh suffering, marked by tension and contradictions, of the transition of the modern age toward a new phase of history, showing constant concern that the human person be its protagonist,” Benedict said, speaking before the largest crowds to swell Saint Peter’s Square since John Paul’s funeral in 2005.
Benedict declared John Paul “blessed,” meaning that he is able to be publicly venerated. He also greeted Sister Marie Simone-Pierre, a French nun who said that she recovered from Parkinson’s disease after praying to John Paul, a cure that Benedict had declared miraculous. An additional miracle is required for canonization.
An estimated 1.5 million people turned out for Sunday’s celebration, Italian authorities said. Many camped out overnight and crammed together shoulder-to-shoulder for blocks to be near the festivities.
During the Mass, a tapestry of John Paul based on a 1989 photograph was unveiled from the balcony of Saint Peter’s. It showed the Polish pontiff with a twinkle in his eye and a slightly wry smile, the John Wayne of the modern papacy, both tough and tender.
Benedict praised John Paul for having carried out the vision of the liberalizing SecondVatican Council. “On a more personal note,” he added, “I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II.”
Indeed, in its full-voiced celebration of the life of John Paul, who led the church for 26 years, presiding over the fall of communism and the rise of the global church, the festive Mass could not but underscore the comparatively quiet and often troubled tenor of Benedict’s six-year-old papacy.
Benedict inherited a sex abuse scandal that emerged in the final decade of John Paul’s reign, prompting some victims and critics to oppose the beatification and to question its speed, the fastest in modern times. Benedict waived the traditional five-year wait to begin the beatification trial, which began just weeks after John Paul’s death.
But in spite of the scandal and what some see as questions in the historical record, for many, the late pope’s memory remains very real. “I miss him, so very much,” said Cristiana Arru, a lawyer from Rome who grew up near the Vatican and came often to see the pope celebrate Mass. Her eyes welled up with tears. “I still feel as though I’ve been orphaned.”
“Anyone who was in the piazza when he spoke felt as though he was speaking directly to them,” she said. “He was a very empathetic person.”
John Paul’s was a papacy of milestones. In 1978, as Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, he became the first non-Italian to become pope in four centuries. Under him, the church issued its first new catechism in nearly 500 years. In 2000, he asked pardon for the church’s sins against Jews, women, heretics and minorities. He was also the first pope to visit a mosque and a synagogue.
He survived an assassination attempt by a Turkish gunman in 1981, a still-hazy chapter in Cold War history. He later visited the gunman in prison and forgave him.
The Reverend John-Paul Gonzales, a California priest who attended the ceremony, said he considered himself “part of the John Paul II generation.” He was born a year to the day after the pope was elected and was named for him, he said.
He could think of no other older person “who could have had such a strong impact on so many young generations,” Father Gonzales said. “He was a grandfatherly figure for the world, a grandfather for my generation.”
Pilgrims came from around the world, but the colors that dominated the square were the white and red of the Polish flag, and a smattering of tall yellow signs for Solidarity, the Polish labor union movement whose strikes in the early 1980s helped bring about the end of European communism.
Michael Mroz, a student, said he had driven to Rome with a group of friends from Poland. “The car seats five but we stuck two more in the trunk,” he said. At Saint Peter’s, “We sang pilgrim songs in Polish, but it was nice to hear other people humming along.”
The former Polish president and leader of the Solidarity strikes, Lech Walesa, attended the Mass, as did Poland’s current president, Bronislaw Komorowski.
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, one of Africa’s longest-ruling autocrats, who was raised a Catholic, sat in the front row with his wife, Grace. President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, where John Paul had close ties, also attended, as did Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and president, Giorgio Napolitano.
In Italy, the beatification has been receiving blanket television coverage rivaled only by that of the royal wedding in London on Friday.
Saint Peter’s Basilica comes alive at moments like this, when the round arms of Bernini’s elliptical colonnade embrace throngs of pilgrims. As a choir sang hymns and the bells of Saint Peter’s tolled, hundreds of cardinals in red skullcaps and bishops in pink sashes stood on the steps to the basilica, their long robes blowing in the wind.
Later, Benedict walked into the Basilica to kiss John Paul’s closed casket. He was followed by scores of cardinals who did the same. The simple wooden casket will be placed in a side chapel next to Michelangelo’s “Pietà.”
The Vatican declared Oct. 22, the day that John Paul was installed as pope in 1978, as a day for his public veneration.
In a 21st-century twist on an ancient tradition, during the ceremony, Benedict kissed a reliquary in the form of a silver olive branch holding a test tube filled with some of John Paul’s blood, part of a supply saved by a Rome hospital in case the pontiff needed a transfusion.
Outside Saint Peter’s, Stefano Rossetti, the owner of Domus Arts, a souvenir shop, said that John Paul memorabilia has always sold well. “Logically, we’re selling lots now,” he said, wearing a t-shirt that read “Santo subito,” or “Sainthood now,” a slogan that erupted from the crowds during John Paul’s funeral.
“Benedict is great,” he said, “but he has a very important legacy that he has to deal with.”
“He was witness to the tragic age of big ideologies, totalitarian regimes, and from their passing John Paul II embraced the harsh suffering, marked by tension and contradictions, of the transition of the modern age toward a new phase of history, showing constant concern that the human person be its protagonist,” Benedict said, speaking before the largest crowds to swell Saint Peter’s Square since John Paul’s funeral in 2005.
Benedict declared John Paul “blessed,” meaning that he is able to be publicly venerated. He also greeted Sister Marie Simone-Pierre, a French nun who said that she recovered from Parkinson’s disease after praying to John Paul, a cure that Benedict had declared miraculous. An additional miracle is required for canonization.
An estimated 1.5 million people turned out for Sunday’s celebration, Italian authorities said. Many camped out overnight and crammed together shoulder-to-shoulder for blocks to be near the festivities.
During the Mass, a tapestry of John Paul based on a 1989 photograph was unveiled from the balcony of Saint Peter’s. It showed the Polish pontiff with a twinkle in his eye and a slightly wry smile, the John Wayne of the modern papacy, both tough and tender.
Benedict praised John Paul for having carried out the vision of the liberalizing SecondVatican Council. “On a more personal note,” he added, “I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II.”
Indeed, in its full-voiced celebration of the life of John Paul, who led the church for 26 years, presiding over the fall of communism and the rise of the global church, the festive Mass could not but underscore the comparatively quiet and often troubled tenor of Benedict’s six-year-old papacy.
Benedict inherited a sex abuse scandal that emerged in the final decade of John Paul’s reign, prompting some victims and critics to oppose the beatification and to question its speed, the fastest in modern times. Benedict waived the traditional five-year wait to begin the beatification trial, which began just weeks after John Paul’s death.
But in spite of the scandal and what some see as questions in the historical record, for many, the late pope’s memory remains very real. “I miss him, so very much,” said Cristiana Arru, a lawyer from Rome who grew up near the Vatican and came often to see the pope celebrate Mass. Her eyes welled up with tears. “I still feel as though I’ve been orphaned.”
“Anyone who was in the piazza when he spoke felt as though he was speaking directly to them,” she said. “He was a very empathetic person.”
John Paul’s was a papacy of milestones. In 1978, as Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, he became the first non-Italian to become pope in four centuries. Under him, the church issued its first new catechism in nearly 500 years. In 2000, he asked pardon for the church’s sins against Jews, women, heretics and minorities. He was also the first pope to visit a mosque and a synagogue.
He survived an assassination attempt by a Turkish gunman in 1981, a still-hazy chapter in Cold War history. He later visited the gunman in prison and forgave him.
The Reverend John-Paul Gonzales, a California priest who attended the ceremony, said he considered himself “part of the John Paul II generation.” He was born a year to the day after the pope was elected and was named for him, he said.
He could think of no other older person “who could have had such a strong impact on so many young generations,” Father Gonzales said. “He was a grandfatherly figure for the world, a grandfather for my generation.”
Pilgrims came from around the world, but the colors that dominated the square were the white and red of the Polish flag, and a smattering of tall yellow signs for Solidarity, the Polish labor union movement whose strikes in the early 1980s helped bring about the end of European communism.
Michael Mroz, a student, said he had driven to Rome with a group of friends from Poland. “The car seats five but we stuck two more in the trunk,” he said. At Saint Peter’s, “We sang pilgrim songs in Polish, but it was nice to hear other people humming along.”
The former Polish president and leader of the Solidarity strikes, Lech Walesa, attended the Mass, as did Poland’s current president, Bronislaw Komorowski.
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, one of Africa’s longest-ruling autocrats, who was raised a Catholic, sat in the front row with his wife, Grace. President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, where John Paul had close ties, also attended, as did Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and president, Giorgio Napolitano.
In Italy, the beatification has been receiving blanket television coverage rivaled only by that of the royal wedding in London on Friday.
Saint Peter’s Basilica comes alive at moments like this, when the round arms of Bernini’s elliptical colonnade embrace throngs of pilgrims. As a choir sang hymns and the bells of Saint Peter’s tolled, hundreds of cardinals in red skullcaps and bishops in pink sashes stood on the steps to the basilica, their long robes blowing in the wind.
Later, Benedict walked into the Basilica to kiss John Paul’s closed casket. He was followed by scores of cardinals who did the same. The simple wooden casket will be placed in a side chapel next to Michelangelo’s “Pietà.”
In a 21st-century twist on an ancient tradition, during the ceremony, Benedict kissed a reliquary in the form of a silver olive branch holding a test tube filled with some of John Paul’s blood, part of a supply saved by a Rome hospital in case the pontiff needed a transfusion.
Outside Saint Peter’s, Stefano Rossetti, the owner of Domus Arts, a souvenir shop, said that John Paul memorabilia has always sold well. “Logically, we’re selling lots now,” he said, wearing a t-shirt that read “Santo subito,” or “Sainthood now,” a slogan that erupted from the crowds during John Paul’s funeral.
“Benedict is great,” he said, “but he has a very important legacy that he has to deal with.”
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