The date for the arrival of two more saints within the Catholic Church will be announced today. So what\u2019s two more, given the recent deluge from the Vatican? After all, Pope John Paul II, by himself created more saints than all previous popes put together. But this time John Paul II is to be one of them, along with a predecessor pope, John XXIII.<\/p>\n
This is a bad idea, especially at a time when the new incumbent, Pope Francis, is sending out so many signals that he intends real change within the world\u2019s biggest faith. \u00a0It is not just his gestures of ostentatious ordinariness \u2013 carrying his own bags, making his own phonecalls, eating in the refectory. He has also begun to shake up the Vatican Bank, the Curia and to appoint a raft of more open-minded top officials. So why stick with the old ways on making saints?<\/p>\n
For the first half of Christianity\u2019s 2,000-year-history, saints were created by the acclamation of ordinary believers. It often took centuries for the authorities officially to endorse this populist sanctification. \u00a0But JP2\u2019s elevation to sainthood must be the fastest in history. His successor, Benedict XVI, even dispensed with the requirement that you have to be dead five years before the sainting process can begin.<\/p>\n
In medieval times the delay was purposely far longer. The passing years allowed the \u201cheroic virtue\u201d of the saint to eclipse any personal failings in the public memory. But ever since the Vatican took control of canonisations in the 11th<\/sup> century, periodically tightening its control ever since, the process has become politicised. Pope Benedict\u2019s fast-tracking of his predecessor was, in part, an attempt to consolidate his conservative legacy \u2013 and create a bulwark against what both men saw as the excesses of the Second Vatican Council which revolutionised Catholicism in the 1960s.<\/p>\n There is a political dimension to today\u2019s announcement. The Polish pope\u2019s canonisation had been approved before Pope Francis took over. So Francis will couple it with that of John XXIII, who launched the Vatican II revolution. This is a clear attempt to neutralise the political impact of the rush to promote JP2 to sainthood. The liberal \u201cGood Pope John\u201d will counter-balance the conservative \u201cJohn Paul the Great\u201d.<\/p>\n The Polish pope\u2019s supporters are clear about his greatness. The globe-trotting rock-stadium pontiff was the most popular in modern times; 17 million people travelled to Rome to see him in his 26 years. He played a key role in the collapse of Communism. He was the first pope to visit a synagogue and mosque. He repeatedly begged forgiveness for centuries of Christian slander of the Jews. He apologised, finally, for the Crusades and the persecution of Galileo. And he gave dignity to the dying by his own protracted public final illness.<\/p>\n But if the first half of his papacy was good for the world, the second was bad for the Church. He suppressed debate, silenced theologians and outlawed discussion on women priests. He applied his condemnations of the \u201cdictatorship of relativism\u201d to pluralistic societies without qualification. The Vatican II\u00a0doctrine of collegiality was changed to mean that bishops were being collegial if they agreed with him \u2013 and he appointed bishops who did that. And for decades he ignored the mounting evidence of priestly sex abuse even protecting the serial abuser Fr Marcial Maciel who founded the conservative Legionaries of Christ.<\/p>\n The skill-set for a pope and a saint are far from the same. But there is enough about JP2\u2019s record to echo the conclusion many reached when Margaret Thatcher was awarded a virtual state funeral: some figures are too controversial and divisive to be accorded a universal acclaim.<\/p>\n There is, in any case, something dodgy about a Dead Pope\u2019s Society, smacking as it does of heavenly joys for the boys. If we are to have saints they should, as JP2 to his credit understood, be drawn from the ranks of lay women and men not just the ordained.\u00a0 Pope Francis should make it clear that, after this, there will be no more papal saints. Or, at the very least, put the whole business on hold for a couple of centuries.<\/p>\n The Guardian<\/i><\/p>\n Pope Francis \u2013 Untying the Knots by Paul Vallely is published by Bloomsbury<\/sub><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The date for the arrival of two more saints within the Catholic Church will be announced today. So what\u2019s two more, given the recent deluge from the Vatican? After all, Pope John Paul II, by himself created more saints than all previous popes put together. But this time John Paul II is to be one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,41],"tags":[684,645,629,683,171],"class_list":["post-8170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-church","category-religion","tag-canonisations","tag-pope-francis","tag-pope-john-paul-ii","tag-pope-john-xxiii","tag-saints"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8172,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8170\/revisions\/8172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}