Could Benedict XVI highlight
the Year of Faith by proclaiming
Paul VI and John Paul I 'Blessed'?
by Antonino d'Anna
Translated from
June 23, 2012
D'Anna is a journalist who writes about religious topics. He co-authored a book in 2010 about the extent of pedophilia and sexual perversions involving children throughout the world.
The 'news' coming from our source in the Vatican is very juicy. Indeed, for some time now, people in the Vatican have been talking about some important 'signal' that Benedict XVI will manifest to the world just before or during the Year of Faith, which marks the 50th anniversary of the opening the Second Vatican Council.
What might it be? Apparently, the beatification of Paul VI and John Paul I - the Pope who closed Vatican II and made the enxt three Popes cardinals (Albino Luciani, Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger), and the Pope of smiles, though he only reigned 33 days in the late summer of 1978.
Both are figures that Benedict XVI could indicate as models to a Church that appears to be agitated by contingencies like Vatileaks. in order to call attention to a way of serving the Church to celebrate the start of the Council which brought about the Church's
aggiornamento or updating (which is still in dispute) according to the inspired initiative of Blessed John XXIII (whom John Paul II beatified during the Jubilee Year of 2000 along with Pius IX) within a few months of becoming Pope.
If Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was the man who opened Vatican II (he died on June 9, 1963, after its first session+, it devolved on Giovanni Battista Montini (elected June 21, 1963) to lead the Council through three more sessions to its conclusion in December 1965.
The period between summer 1963 to December 1965 when the Council ended was full of intense renewal and debates within the Conciliar hall, with decisions that were not easy for
Papa Montini, who did decide that he was not going to let the Council rule on priestly celibacy or sexual morality or contraception.
{Thank God for that!]
A reserved man who was not given to any mediatic gestures that came naturally to John Paul II, Paul VI is generally 'forgotten' by Catholics today. And wrongly so. The penultimate Italian Pope in our time, son of a bourgeois family of Brescia, a great intellectual who was the object of strong criticisms durihg his pontificate (similar in this way to Benedict XVI today), he revealed himself in his full humanity during the bitter days that followed the abduction and eventual murder by Communist terrorists of his longtime good friend Aldo Moro, who was Prime Minister of Italy at the time.
He did not hesitate to write an open letter to the "men of the Red Brigade", begging them, 'on my knees' to "just release him, without conditions". But he was unable to save the Christian Democrat statesman.
On the other hand, there is Albino Luciani, son of the Veneto region, from Canal d'Agordo, born in 1912. He was a 'popular' Pope. In 1972, Paul VI bestowed on him his papal stole on a visit to Venice, of which Luciani was Patriarch. A simple man, a man of the essentials, he wrote letters to famous people or literary characters in the book
Illustrississimi, letters which first appeared in the monthly magazine
Messaggero di Sant'Antonio/ He had known both Papa Roncalli and Papa Montini before they became Pope.
He was Pope for 33 days, and his sudden death (apparently the result fo a heart condition) left a number of questions that have given rise to conspiracy theories ranging from the incredible to the grotesque. What could he have done if he had lived longer? The hypotheses are equally numerous, and he has always been portrayed as something of a progressivist.
In fact, he Pope of smiles would probably not have been an innovator, as one might glean from the description of him in his home diocese of Belluno-Feltre: "In the theological field, he could be considered conservative, having energetically defended the encyclical
Humanae vitae, and he was equally conservative about 'freedom' of conscience. In the disciplinary area, he was a reformer: he found ecclesiastical pomp 'vain', he encouraged his parish priests to sell their precious lioturgical vessels and other assets to spend on the poor. In 1971, he even proposed that the richer churches of the West donate one percent of their annual revenues to the churches of the Third World".
The late Giuseppe De Carli (1952-2009) of RAI who contributed to a film on John Paul I, said: "He had projects that one might call revolutionary. And he did not like being in the Apostolic Palace that he called 'a labyrinth of Croesus'. He wanted an itinerant Church, as John Paul II would later carry out... If he had lived longer, he would have given us great surprises".
But at what point are the causes for beatification of these two Popes? In 2009, before Benedict XVBI visied Brescia in November, the postulator for Paul VI's cause, don Antontio Marrazzo, said: "I can say with a good deal of certainty that by 2010, our statement or Positio on the heroic virtues of the Pope will be completed. It will then be submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood to be included in the list of causes to be analyzed by theologians and the cardinals and bishops who make up the Congregation. The joint recommendation of these two panels would then be presented to the Pope so he can proclaim the candidate's 'heroic virtues'
[This has not yet happened]. Then we must proceed to presenting a miracle that can be attributed to his intercession. And there is a miracle that we have been examining to determine whether the healing produced was, in fact, not explicable by science. This will go through a similar procedure as the Positio, with the addition of a scientific panel, and if the miracle is certified, then the Pope can approve a decree for beatification and set a date for it."
Actually, quite a few miracles are being investigated for Papa Montini, including the healing of cancer patients, babies with severe illness, or work accidents, that have been reported to the church of the Virgin of Graces in Brescia.
As for Papa Luciani, his cause was forwarded to Rome after the conclusion of its diocesan phase in 2006. And the beatification miracle has even been narrowed down to a bank employee from Altamura who was inexplicably healed of stomach cancer when he prayed for the late Pope's intercession.
Brescia already has quite a devotion to its favorite son. As for Papa Luciani, on this centenary year of his birth, Canal d'Agorodo has become the object of many pilgrimages by people who believe his sanctity. Now it is up to the Church to formally recognize what the faithful believe.
It's a most appealing hypothesis - but unless the Congregation for Saints has already been working overtime on the steps towards the beatification of the two Popes, the probability seems remote. Pius XII is at a more advanced stage in the process because he has already been proclaimed Venerable. And a significant probable beatification miracle has been disclosed for him. His beatification - or perhaps, the beatification of all three Popes - would be a great manifestation of the multiple charisms that the Lord sees fit to endow his Vicars on earth with.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/06/2012 06:52]