Church in the World

Pope praises ?servant of God? John Paul II

The first phase of the process of the beatification of John Paul II ended in Rome on Monday, the second anniversary of his death. Documents of testimony were solemnly sealed and transferred to the care of the Congregation for Saints, and later Pope Benedict celebrated a thanksgiving Mass. Tens of thousands of worshippers joined Pope Benedict XVI for the early evening Mass in St Peter's Square. Many hoped to hear a surprise proclamation of the late pope's sainthood but, while acknowledging that John Paul's cause "speedily progresses", Pope Benedict cited the official title used for those not yet beatified when referring to his predecessor. "Servant of God - this is a particularly appropriate title for him," Pope Benedict told the crowds, who he said had gathered "above all" to give thanks for Pope John Paul. Benedict XVI described his funeral as an event "the entire world lived with a participation never seen in history".

The outdoor liturgy drew thousands of Polish pilgrims, including the country's president, as well as foreign diplomats, capping a day of celebrations that began at dawn in the crypt of St Peter's Basilica near the late Pope's simple tomb. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who served as Karol Wojtyla's personal secretary for nearly 40 years, presided at Mass for hundreds of his fellow Poles, including many priests, bishops and two other cardinals. 

They later joined a throng of people at noon in Rome's Cathedral of St John Lateran to participate in a festive ceremony to close the yearlong diocesan phase of the cause for Pope John Paul's beatification, which Pope Benedict had allowed to be opened five years earlier than normal canonical procedures allow for. Several large leather boxes with documents testifying to the late Pope's virtues and saintly qualities were closed with wax seals and the materials sent to the Congregation for Saints. The Vatican officials will now determine whether this evidence is sufficient to proclaim Karol Wojtyla a Blessed, and eventually a saint. 

The documentation of the alleged miraculous cure of Sr Marie Simon-Pierre from Parkinson's disease is crucial to the Pope's cause.  The 46-year-old French sister, a member of the Little Sisters of Catholic Maternities, was present for Monday's ceremonies. The  nun interprets her healing as a signal to continue the late Pope's work in the service of life. At a news conference in Aix-en-Provence last Friday she called her healing in June 2005 "the work of God through the intercession of Pope John Paul II". It was "like a second birth".

Sr Marie, whose identity was kept secret until the Paris daily Le Figaro revealed it last week, told the hastily arranged news conference that she contracted Parkinson's in 2001 and it deteriorated badly after the death of John Paul II on 2 April 2005. It was so far advanced by 2 June that she asked to stop working as supervisor of a maternity ward in Puyricard near Aix-en-Provence. But her superior told her to continue working and praying to the late Pope, saying, "John Paul II has not spoken his final word." The illness disappeared only hours later.

Asked if she considered it a miracle, she said: "All I can say is that I was ill and now I am healed. It's for the Church to say whether this is a miracle. I was healed to serve our mission, to continue to work in the service of life and the family ... and to serve the Gospel of Life that John Paul II defended so much.

"If you believe, you will see the glory of God. That's all I can say," she added. "I met John Paul II once in Rome in March 1984. He shook my hand. That's the only memory I have," she said. "We stood on the chairs to reach out to him and he shook my hand." Sr Marie Simon-Pierre, the oldest of five children in a Catholic family in the Cambrai Diocese in northern France, now works as a nurse at the Sainte Félicité maternity ward in Paris. She said she often went to Lourdes as a teenager to push the wheelchairs of the sick, and it was there she decided to enter the convent.

"For us he is already a saint," Cardinal Dziwisz said during the commemorations. But it was important to do everything "according to the rules of the Church so as not to be accused later of having done something not right".

(See Jonathan Luxmoore, pages 22-23.)