Canonisations date

Confirming months of speculation, Pope Francis has officially announced that he will canonise Popes John Paul II and John XXIII at an outdoor Mass on 27 April in St Peter’s Square, writes Robert Mickens. It marks the first time in history that two popes are to be declared saints at the same time, one of which beatified the other.

The canonisation Mass falls on the Sunday after Easter, which the late John Paul instituted in 2000 as “Divine Mercy Sunday”. The liturgy is expected to as draw as many as two million or more pilgrims, with large crowds coming from John Paul’s native Poland and the late Pope John’s Italian devotees.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ would not exclude the hypothesis that Benedict XVI, who has mostly kept out of the public eye since retiring from the papacy last February, might attend the canonisation Mass. 

* Fr Miroslav Bulesic (1920-1947), who was stabbed to death in his Lanisce presbytery by communist thugs during a violent anti-Church campaign, has been beatified as a martyr in Croatia, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.