{"id":391,"date":"2009-04-02T17:31:21","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T17:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/blessed-john-paul-not-yet.html"},"modified":"2009-04-02T17:31:21","modified_gmt":"2009-04-02T17:31:21","slug":"blessed-john-paul-not-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/blessed-john-paul-not-yet.html","title":{"rendered":"“Blessed” John Paul? Not yet. But patience…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"JP2<\/span>On this, the fourth anniverary of the death of Pope John Paul II, a time that brought millions into the streets of Rome chanting “Santo subito!<\/em>“, the beatification process is moving, but not as quickly as some might hope. <\/p>\n

Benedict prayed at John Paul’s simple tomb today, and yesterday (Wednesday) told Polish pilgrims he was praying for his predecessor’s beatification<\/a>. ”May the spiritual legacy of your great compatriot inspire your personal, family, social and national life. Together with you I pray for the gift of beatification’.’<\/p>\n

Just a month after John Paul’s death, Benedict suspended the usual five-year waiting period to allow the process to begin. And the required miracle has been identified for examination, involving the reported cure of a French nun with Parkinson’s disease.<\/p>\n

Beatification is the penultimate step to be being officially declared a saint, which is canonization. And of course everyone in ehaven, as John Paul would surely be, is a saint. But the Vatican rightly wants to take its time; in fact, the greater the emotional outpouring, the more they want to move slowly. <\/p>\n

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was the late pope’s longtime secretary and confidante, told Polish TV that “there is always hope” that John Paul will be made a saint before the fifth anniversary of his death. But he said the process must go though all necessary stages “so there can be no doubt.”<\/p>\n

Also, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints, Archbishop Angelo Amato, a confidante of Benedict, told Vatican Radio that the process must actually be more rigorous and thorough for a pope like John Paul since he was so well-known.<\/p>\n

“Promptness doesn’t mean speed or superficiality; on the contrary this requires care and professionalism,” Amato said.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I like the old days, when sainthood was the result of local–or in this case, the global village–devotion that was only later recognized by Rome. That is in a sense what is happening today, though ever so slowly. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this, the fourth anniverary of the death of Pope John Paul II, a time that brought millions into the streets of Rome chanting “Santo subito!“, the beatification process is moving, but not as quickly as some might hope. Benedict prayed at John Paul’s simple tomb today, and yesterday (Wednesday) told Polish pilgrims he was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\n"Blessed" John Paul? Not yet. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}