Post date: Sep 30, 2013 2:19:6 PM
Pope John Paul II, the Polish pontiff who led the Catholic Church for 27 years and witnessed the fall of communism and Pope John XXIII, who called the reforming Second Vatican council, will be declared saints on April 27.
VATICAN CITY (SEPTEMBER 30, 2013) (CTV) - Pope John Paul II, the globe-trotting pontiff who led the Catholic Church for nearly 27 years, and Pope John XXIII, who called the reforming Second Vatican Council, will be declared saints.
Pope Francis will celebrate the canonization ceremonies, which are likely to bring hundreds of thousands to people to Rome, most probably in April 2014.The Vatican has said Pope John XXIII, who reigned from 1958 to 1963 and called the 1962-1965Second Vatican Council - which enacted sweeping reforms to modernize the Church - would be made a saint even though he has only been credited with one miracle since his death.
Pope Francis had approved a second miracle attributed to John Paul, a Pole who was elected in 1978 as the first non-Italian pope in 450 years and died in 2005. His progression to sainthood is the fastest in modern times.
John Paul had already been credited with asking God to cure a French nun of Parkinson's disease, the same malady he had, before he was beatified in 2011.
Two confirmed miracles are usually required under Vatican rules for the declaration of a saint.
The second miracle attributed to his intercession is the inexplicable curing of a Costa Rican woman who prayed to him for help with her medical condition on the day of his beatification.
In the case of Pope John XXIII, who was known as the "good pope", Francis waived the customary rules requiring a second miracle after beatification, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardisaid. John XXIII was beatified in 2000.
Francis, who has tried to instill a spirit of simplicity and reform in the Church since his election in March, is known to have great admiration for the reforming Pope John, who was born of peasant stock in northern Italy.
John Paul went down in history as the "globe-trotting pope," visiting every inhabited continent in more than 100 trips outside Italy. His struggle with ill health was watched by millions around the world on television towards the end of his life.
Millions of people attended his funeral in April, 2005, and many cried "Santo Subito" or "Make him a saint immediately".
His successor, Benedict, waived a Church rule that normally requires a five-year waiting period before the preliminaries to sainthood can even begin.
John Paul is respected by Jews because of his 1986 visit to Rome's synagogue, the first by a pope to a Jewish temple.
He is already considered a saint by millions of his countrymen in Poland, having supported their bid for freedom on the world stage for 11 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.