ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

New repercussions from
postulator's book on the late Pope

In an article in La Repubblica yesterday, 2/3/10, Vaticanista Orazio La Rocca reports more disapproval of the publication of a book on John Paul II by the postulator of his cause for beatification, the Polish priest Stanislaw Oder.

It's rather long, so I'll just summarize what he says - although I think his attention-getting headline was unduly alarmist: 'Wojtyla's postulator under a cloud; puts beatification at risk'. Why should the beatification be penalized for an apparent offense by the postulator, an offense that does not bear on the candidate in any way but only on the postulator?

He says the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, Arthbishop Angelo Amato is not too happy at the publication of documents used to support the cause for beatification.

And that Cardinal Stanislaw Dsiwisz, Archbishop of Cracow and John Paul II's private secretary for 40 years, had called Fr. Oder to a meeting in Cracow.

A third person who had been close to the late Pope in his lifetime was more explicit in his disapproval. Fr. Adam Bonecki, who was editor of the Polish edition of L'Osservatore Romano during John Paul's Pontificate and is now editor of Cracow's diocesan paper, saying it was improper to divulge "episodes, documents and confidential information about the late Pope's private life" at this time, before the beatification process has even been completed.

Bonecki added, "It is unthinkable and serious that this breach should have been committed by the postulator himself", a view he says is shared by Cardinal Dsiwisz, who also disapproved of the publication last year of a book by a Polish woman doctor about her decades of correspondence with Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II who considered her a sister.

Earlier, Gianfranco Svidercoschi, who co-wrote the autobiographical Memory and Gift with John Paul II (and Cardinal Dsiwisz's memoir My Life with Karol), pointed out that in divulging material used during the beatification investigations, the postulator had clearly violated Art. 220 of the new norms for the beatification process promulgated by Benedict XVI in 2007 to regulate and better control procedures followed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Oder co-wrote the book with Savino Gaeta, editor of the magazine Famiglia Cristiana, who defended the book by saying that the book "reveals the true face of the Pope like no one has known him".


Even if there had been no specific canonical provision violated in publishing the book at this time, I do find it in poor taste, to say the least, and quite obviously opportunistic. It is not right that a postulator should use confidential material in his possession in a book that could, at the very least, have awaited the completion of the beatification process.

To have published it at this time is a ploy to take commercial advantage of the renewed public interest in John Paul II in anticipation of his imminent beatification. For all I know, Fr. Oder may have pledged all the proceeds from the book to a deserving cause, but he could have done that, too - and the book would sell just as much - if he had waited a decent period.

To use the pretext that the book intends to show the 'true face' of Karol Wojtyla is disingenuous. It is not as if the face he presented to the world during his 27 years as Pope was not his true face, or that the general public needs to be convinced about his saintliness - they already are, without need of the gratuitous and appparently conjectural account of his self-flagellation!

P.S. I think, perhaps, the Diocese of Rome, the Diocese of Cracow and the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood should consider naming a new postulator - one who is not self-serving - for the rest of John Paul II's cause.