John Paul II and John XXIII: Wonderful people, hardly saints

                                   
                                                 ... Francis' political hot potato?

Across the world the headlines are not what Karol Józef Wojtyła would have hoped for on what should have been the celebration of his greatest accomplishment. Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II in 1978 and spent the next 27 years leading the church, moving the Roman Catholics to respect him as a passionate and holy man until his death in 2005.

Immediately after his death, his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, previously Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger of Germany, "fast-tracked" his friend and predecessor on the road to sainthood. The general rule is that nothing is done about becoming a saint until five years after the person has passed from the earth. but John Paul II changed that ruled prior to his death based on documents from VatiLeaks.

That ceremony of sainthood will occur on Sunday, April 27th in Rome, and it will also include Pope John XXIII, the architect of Vatican II, who is much less controversial than John Paul. 

Francis hoped to appease critics of Paul II by adding John XXIII, but it did not work. 

People across the globe are expressing their outrage at the sainthood of John Paul.   The headlines explained their angst: from Dublin, "John Paul II: tainted saint?"; from New York, "A Saint He Ain't"; from Great Britain, "The Politics of Saint Making."

When Pope Benedict XVI resigned as pope last year, the Vatican was in turmoil. Vatican City was racked by scandal from the VatiLeaks affair to the charges of money laundering against the Vatican Bank to the homosexual cadre of priests working in the Vatican bureaucracy. 

These occurred for many reasons but the primary one was the administrative policies that took place under Benedict and John Paul II.

Despite scandal and the worst crisis in the Catholic Church in its history, the pedophilia abuse of young people by priests over the past 50 years, both popes -- John Paul and Benedict -- ignored the situation. That has ruined the name of the Roman Catholic church in the U.S. in addition to globally.

However, Pope Francis I has won plaudits around the world for changing the narrative of Catholics from rigid authoritarianism of his predecessors to the grass roots of Catholicism, leading him to be called "The People's Pope." Francis is attempting to undo the damage done by those who came before him.

Pope Francis had another dilemma. Because  Benedict "fast-tracked" him to sainthood, he was in a corner. He could have slowed down the entire process, but he realized that the conservatives -- upset at him because of his policies that are diametrically opposed to those of Paul and Benedict -- would be outraged.

Why did Benedict fast-track him in the first place? He probably realized that if people had time to evaluate the papacy of Paul II, they may have had second thoughts about him. Everyone agrees that he is a holy man, but some of his policies and positions have been horrible. 

The worst crisis has been the pedophile scandals that rocked the church during Paul's tenure. This has embarrassed Americans and has led many Catholics, particularly the young people, to leave the church. The Pew Foundation has discovered a very disturbing number for the Catholic Church: Ten percent of all Americans are fallen-away Catholics. That is not entirely due to the pedophilia scandals, but it should cause people to consider why this is happening. 

Maureen Dowd, a Catholic who writes a column for the New York Times, wrote, "The church is giving its biggest prize to the person who could have fixed the spreading stain and did nothing. The buck, or in this case, the Communion wafer, doesn’t stop here. There is something wounding and ugly about the church signaling that those thousands of betrayed, damaged victims are now taken for granted as a slowly fading asterisk. John Paul may be a revolutionary figure in the history of the church, but a man who looked away in a moral crisis cannot be described as a saint."

Irish Times Vatican correspondent Paddy Agnew penned a critique that was similar to that of Dowd: "He was a holy man, but was he a saint? As Pope Francis prepares to canonise two of his predecessors, two weeks from now, that question mark hangs over the head of John Paul II, if not of John XXIII … Yet many continue to have reservations about his impending sainthood. Secular, non-Catholic world opinion continues to point a finger at his handling of the sex-abuse crisis, which broke on his watch. Catholics also wonder whether the fastest canonization process of modern times is not just a little too fast.

"Latin Americans and others wonder about his lack of sympathy or support for the liberation-theology movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Liberal Catholics question his conservative teaching on sexual mores, as well as his conservative appointments. Others ask if he was not too enthusiastic about lay movements such as Opus Dei, Comunione e Liberazione and, above all, the Legionaries of Christ of the late, disgraced Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado."

Here are the major complaints about why a fast-track should have been derailed by Francis, which was in his power:

1. His woeful ignoring of the global pedophile scandal -- as well as the ascension of the most egregious enabler, Charles Law, former Boston leader;

2. His horrible decision regarding pedophile and womanizer Marcial Maciel Degoliado, who fathered at least two children and abused many of his seminarians while leading the "Legionairres of Christ";

3. His unwillingness to be truthful about his desire to undermine Vatican II, one of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th Century Church;

4. His willingness to support dictators in Central America rather than leaders like xxx who espoused Liberation Theology;

5. His action in politicizing the Church in a way in which only hard-right rigid conservatives advanced to management roles such as bishops and cardinals;

6. As part of that rigidity, his selection of the controversial group Opus Dei as a prelature.

"John Paul II: Tainted saint?" http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/john-paul-ii-tainted-saint-1.1759166

"A saint he ain't"

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/opinion/dowd-a-saint-he-aint.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=0