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VATICAN CITY — Some 1.5 million pilgrims flooded Rome today to watch Pope John Paul II move a step closer to sainthood in one of the largest Vatican Masses in history, an outpouring of adoration for a beloved and historic figure after years marred by church scandal.
The turnout for the beatification far exceeded even the most optimistic expectation of 1 million people, the number Rome city officials predicted. For Catholics filling St. Peter’s Square and streets and watching around the world, the beatification was a welcome hearkening back to the days when the pope was almost universally beloved.
“He was like a king to us, like a father,” Marynka Ulaszewska, a 28-year-old from Ciechocinek, Poland, said, weeping. “I hope these emotions will remain with us for a long time,” she said.
Pope Benedict XVI, who has set off controversies with remarks on Islam, contraception, and other issues, praised John Paul for turning back the seemingly “irreversible” tide of communism with faith, courage and “the strength of a titan, a strength which came to him from God.”John Paul is universally credited with helping bring down communism in his native Poland with support for the Solidarity labor movement, accelerating the fall of the Iron Curtain. “He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress,” Benedict said. “He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope.”
John Paul’s beatification, the fastest in modern times, has triggered a new wave of anger from sex-abuse victims because much of the criminality occurred during his 27-year watch. Critics also say John Paul left behind empty churches in Europe, too few priests in North and South America, priests who violate their celibacy requirement in places like Africa and a general dwindling of the faith in former Christian strongholds.
John Paul’s defenders argue that an entire generation of new priests owe their vocations to John Paul, and that millions of lay Catholics found their faith during the World Youth Days, which were a hallmark of his papacy. Vatican officials have insisted that the saint-making process isn’t a judgment of how John Paul administered the church but rather whether he lived a life of Christian virtue."
1.5 million? Really? I can remember making my First Communion, in June when he visited Colorado. It was an unforgettable experience, even though I was just a little kid and didn't see much. When he died back in 2005 in a way I felt that I had lost a grandfather.
To say he brought about the downfall of Communism is a stretch. As growing up Catholic, I'd hear the stories about how he had to hide from the Nazi's to attend seminary which made him bring more philosophical and sociological issues into the Church that is now being regarded as the common view. He treated women as being more than second class citizens (both inside and outside the Church) insisting that that they have equal rights to men, and be allowed to bear children and still work in this fucked up global economy. Of course he did not directly go after all the known pedophiles within the Church instead opting that the Bishops be held responsible for what was done on their watch. Pope John Paul II was complex man but hardly deserving of Sainthood in my opinion.
The turnout for the beatification far exceeded even the most optimistic expectation of 1 million people, the number Rome city officials predicted. For Catholics filling St. Peter’s Square and streets and watching around the world, the beatification was a welcome hearkening back to the days when the pope was almost universally beloved.
“He was like a king to us, like a father,” Marynka Ulaszewska, a 28-year-old from Ciechocinek, Poland, said, weeping. “I hope these emotions will remain with us for a long time,” she said.
Pope Benedict XVI, who has set off controversies with remarks on Islam, contraception, and other issues, praised John Paul for turning back the seemingly “irreversible” tide of communism with faith, courage and “the strength of a titan, a strength which came to him from God.”John Paul is universally credited with helping bring down communism in his native Poland with support for the Solidarity labor movement, accelerating the fall of the Iron Curtain. “He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress,” Benedict said. “He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope.”
John Paul’s beatification, the fastest in modern times, has triggered a new wave of anger from sex-abuse victims because much of the criminality occurred during his 27-year watch. Critics also say John Paul left behind empty churches in Europe, too few priests in North and South America, priests who violate their celibacy requirement in places like Africa and a general dwindling of the faith in former Christian strongholds.
John Paul’s defenders argue that an entire generation of new priests owe their vocations to John Paul, and that millions of lay Catholics found their faith during the World Youth Days, which were a hallmark of his papacy. Vatican officials have insisted that the saint-making process isn’t a judgment of how John Paul administered the church but rather whether he lived a life of Christian virtue."
1.5 million? Really? I can remember making my First Communion, in June when he visited Colorado. It was an unforgettable experience, even though I was just a little kid and didn't see much. When he died back in 2005 in a way I felt that I had lost a grandfather.
To say he brought about the downfall of Communism is a stretch. As growing up Catholic, I'd hear the stories about how he had to hide from the Nazi's to attend seminary which made him bring more philosophical and sociological issues into the Church that is now being regarded as the common view. He treated women as being more than second class citizens (both inside and outside the Church) insisting that that they have equal rights to men, and be allowed to bear children and still work in this fucked up global economy. Of course he did not directly go after all the known pedophiles within the Church instead opting that the Bishops be held responsible for what was done on their watch. Pope John Paul II was complex man but hardly deserving of Sainthood in my opinion.
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