Hundreds of thousands jammed St. Peter's Square and surrounding streets Sunday for the beatification of Pope John Paul II, a celebration to honor the first step to possible sainthood for one of the most adored popes.
The ceremony was a morale boost for a church scarred by the priestly sex abuse scandal, and the scene around the Vatican was reminiscent of John Paul's final days in 2005. Then, some 3 million people staged around-the-clock vigils underneath his studio window and then paid their final respects once he had died.
As selections of John Paul's homilies were recited over loudspeakers, nuns sat in circles playing guitars and singing hymns, fathers hoisted their children on their shoulders so they could see, and scouts and young Catholic groups waved flags from Poland, France, Britain and Argentina.
"He went all over the world," said Bishop Jean Zerbo of Bamako, Mali, who came to Rome for the ceremony. "Today, we're coming to him."
Police placed wide swaths of Rome even miles from the Vatican off limits to private cars to ensure security for some of the 16 heads of state and five members of European royalty attending.
Spain's Crown Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia wearing a black lace mantilla mingled with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, Poland's Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who sidestepped an EU travel ban to attend.
Helicopters flew overhead, police boats patrolled the nearby Tiber River and some 5,000 uniformed troops patrolled police barricades to ensure priests, official delegations and those with coveted VIP passes could get to their places.
Thousands of pilgrims, many of them from John Paul's native Poland, spent the night in sleeping bags on bridges and in piazzas around town, and then packed St. Peter's as soon as the barricades opened over an hour in advance because the crowds were too great.
They stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the main boulevard leading to the Vatican, Via della Conciliazione, as well as on side streets around it and the bridges crossing the Tiber leading to St. Peter's, where Pope Benedict XVI was to celebrate the beatification Mass at 0800 GMT (4 a.m. EDT).
"John Paul was a wonderful man and it's a privilege to be here. It's wonderful to see people from all across the world," said Anne Honiball, 48, a nursing home administrator from Worthing, England who carried a small Union Jack flag.
"We missed the royal wedding but we are Catholics and this was a bit more important, I suppose," said Honibal, a former Protestant who converted to Catholicism 10 years ago.
It's the fastest beatification on record, coming just six years after John Paul died.
Benedict put John Paul on the fast-track for possible sainthood when he dispensed with the traditional five-year waiting period and allowed the beatification process to begin weeks after his April 2, 2005, death. Benedict was responding to chants of "Santo Subito" or "Sainthood Immediately" which erupted during John Paul's funeral.
On Saturday night, a "Santo Subito" banner was emblazoned on the side of the Circus Maximus field, where an all-night prayer vigil kicked off the beatification celebrations in earnest. The event featured testimony of the French nun whose inexplicable cure from Parkinson's disease was deemed miraculous by the Vatican, the miracle needed for John Paul to be beatified.
"He died a saint," Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul's longtime secretary, told the crowd.
After the vigil officially ended, many pilgrims spent the night moving around the center visiting eight churches that stayed open all night, a "white night" of prayer in honor of the late pope.
The beatification is taking place despite a steady drumbeat of criticism about the record-fast speed with which John Paul is being honored, and continued outrage about clerical abuse: Many of the crimes and cover-ups of priests who raped children occurred on John Paul's 27-year watch.
"I hope he didn't know about the pedophiles," said Sister Maria Luisa Garcia, a Spanish nun attending the vigil. "If he did, it was an error. But no one is perfect, only God."
Video montages used during the vigil showed various scenes of John Paul's lengthy pontificate, his teachings about marriage and justice. One of the first shown was of his final Easter, when he was unable to speak from his studio window, too hobbled by Parkinson's, and only managed a weak blessing of the crowd.
Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, the French nun cured of Parkinson's, said that at the time she couldn't bear to watch John Paul's condition worsen because she knew his slow decline would be her fate.
"In him, I was reminded of what I was living through," she told the crowd. "But I always admired his humility, his strength, his courage."
Wearing her simple white habit and a black cardigan, she recounted to the crowd her now well-known tale: She said that on June 2, 2005, she told her superior she felt she could no longer continue her work helping new mothers because her Parkinson's symptoms had worsened and she had little strength left.
Her superior, she said, told her that "John Paul II hasn't had the last word" and that she should pray.
She said she woke up the following morning "feeling something had changed in me." She said she went to the chapel and prayed. "I wasn't the same. I knew I had been cured."
The Vatican's complicated saint-making procedures require that a miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession be confirmed before beatification, and a second one for canonization.
Rome was full of Poles overjoyed that their native son was being honored. Special trains, planes and buses shuttled Poles in for the beatification, which was drawing some 16 heads of state and five members of European royal houses.
Anna Fotyga, a former Polish foreign minister and member of Poland's parliament, arrived on a special train Sunday morning carrying the Polish parliamentary delegation. She reminisced about John Paul's impact on communist Poland in the late 1970s and 80s.
"I was a student at that time, and actually seeing him, listening to him started transformation in Poland, I am sure," she said.
In Krakow, where John Paul was archbishop, two TV screens at two different sites were set up to broadcast the beatification ceremony Sunday from Rome. Houses were decorated with Poland's white-and-red flags and the Vatican's white-and-yellow colors.
The vigil featured televised hookups from five Marian shrines in Krakow, Mexico, Tanzania, Portugal and Lebanon, where the faithful were also celebrating.
Thousands of Mexicans held a prayer vigil in Mexico City's Virgen of Guadalupe Basilica on Saturday while two large screens inside the church projected the celebrations in Rome.
Vatican officials have insisted that John Paul deserves beatification despite the fallout from the abuse scandal, saying the saint-making process isn't a judgment of how he administered the church but rather whether he lived a life of Christian virtue.
But victims' groups such as the U.S. Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests have said the speedy beatification was just "rubbing more salt in these wounds" of victims.
No comments:
Post a Comment