Photo by Crosby Ignasher
Info graphic by Gabby Manotoc
Santo Subito! Santo Subito! Santo Subito!
When the Latin chant meaning “Sainthood now!” rang out in St. Peter’s Square in April 2005 after the death of Pope John Paul II, it was a call from the Catholic Church’s more than 1 billion faithful, demanding that their beloved pontiff be made a saint. Now nine years later, John Paul’s fans are finally getting their wish.
Pope Francis, the current Pontifex Maximus, canonized Blessed Pope John Paul II on April 27, 2014, in a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. Also made a saint was Blessed Pope John XXIII, often called “Good Pope John” for his sense of humor and fatherly disposition.
The event marked the first time in history that two popes have been canonized together, and, according to modest estimates, more than 800,000 people packed the streets of Vatican City for the ceremony. Another 500,000 gathered in several of Rome’s different squares and piazzas where giant projection screens had been set up to stream the ceremony live.
Vatican observers have noted the double canonization as an attempt by Pope Francis to bring together the often-opposing conservative and liberal factions within the Church. The former group reveres John Paul II for his traditional approach, as well as for his constant emphasis on the family and the value of human life. The Church’s liberal wing, though, looks to John XXIII as a man who modernized the 2,000-year-old institution by starting the Second Vatican Council in 1962.
John’s council, informally called Vatican II, brought many liturgical reforms to the Church and reoriented the institution to focus more on the laity rather than on the hierarchical clergy in Rome. Vatican II also revolutionized the way the Church interacted with other faiths. It opened the doors to real ecumenism and allowed for dialogue with Protestants and Jews and other religions as well.
The people engaging in that real ecumenism were the common people, the laity.
“One of the great things that was emphasized at [Vatican II] was the universal call to holiness,” said Father Daniel Firmin, the vicar general at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist here in Savannah.
Father Firmin said John XXIII “spoke to the average person” and made sure every member of his flock heard “the call to holiness of every person.”
Although John died before Vatican II’s end, his successors made sure the reforms stuck. John Paul II, elected pope in 1978, continued to focus much of the Church’s attention on the laity.
In the early years of his papacy, John Paul II worked with U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher to help bring down communism in Europe. His encyclical “Laborem Exercens” (in English “On Human Work”) helped further develop Catholic social teaching on issues related to the working class, underscoring the Church’s opposition to the Soviet socialism dominating much of Eastern Europe at the time.
With his later encyclicals, JPII focused heavily on life issues, arguing vehemently against the morality of abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia and human embryonic stem cell research. His papacy brought about a new evangelization based on the sacredness of all human life. The world watched him live that evangelization, too, as JPII slowly succumbed to the effects of Parkinson’s disease, an illness that drained him bit by bit until his death in ‘05. His refusal to step down and retire showed that all human beings, no matter their age or condition, can live with dignity.
In this way, John Paul II extended Vatican II’s call to holiness to encompass the family as a unit. He focused on the family’s youngest members, as well as its oldest, and tackled many of the issues plaguing those members in between.
Father Firmin described this family emphasis as a “big hallmark of his pontificate.”
First-year SCAD student Sam Ikhwan from LaGrange, Georgia, said John Paul II especially affected him because of his attention to Catholic youth.
“He was always more youth-centered and focused on bringing the younger generation into the Church,” Ikhwan said. “John Paul established what is now World Youth Day, which is an event held every few years where every Catholic youth is invited to a different country to worship together as children of God with the pope.”
The next World Youth Day is set to take place in Krakow, Poland—a nod to JPII, who was Polish.
The canonization ceremony itself seemed to be a miniature World Youth Day. People from all over the world flew into Rome to attend, and the popes themselves all hailed from different nations.
Deceased pontiffs John XXIII and John Paul II were from Italy and Poland respectively, while current Pope Francis was born in Argentina. Also present was emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, a German. The ceremony was the first time four popes have been brought together in such a way.
“It’s monumental,” Father Firmin said of the occasion. “That’s never happened in the history of the Church.”
Now a part of that same history is the legacy of Pope Saint John XXIII and that of Pope Saint John Paul II. With their sainthood, Catholics everywhere have cause to celebrate.
