UNITED STATES
GlobalPost
Jason Berry
On Sunday, Pope Francis will elevate two past popes to sainthood, John XXIII and John Paul II, each a figure of major historical weight, each a visionary, each bearing responsibility for the divergent trail of the church beyond their own lives.
Francis’s decision to canonize the two popes on Divine Mercy Sunday is a gesture of unity for a church battered by scandals in the public square by appealing to camps on the left and right who revere the two popes in different ways. It also provides a chance to look closely of the history of both popes.
John XXIII and John Paul II loom as polar figures in the church we know today. It represents the largest faith in the world, one thought for centuries to be changeless, yet a church that has changed constantly, if not utterly, since John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council from 1962-65.
Conservatives decry the council for opening the floodgates of Vatican II, unloosing too much change. They have a point. The church once described as “Here comes everybody” by the noted Irish agnostic James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake is still a big tent, yet one divided into blue and red followers, like election-time TV maps. …
After Pope Benedict beatified John Paul in 2011, putting him on a fast track for canonization, abuse survivors raised an outcry over John Paul’s unwavering support of the long-accused pedophile, Legion of Christ founder Father Marcial Maciel.
After 1998, when former seminarians filed detailed allegations seeking Maciel’s excommunication in Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s tribunal, John Paul continued praising Maciel. In late 2004, five months before the pope died, Ratzinger ordered an investigation of Maciel, and as Pope Benedict dismissed him from active ministry in 2006.
At a Vatican briefing on Tuesday, Msgr. Sławomir Oder, who worked on John Paul’s sainthood cause, told reporters: “Without getting into details, I can say that the investigation was carried out with the real desire to clear things up and confront all the problems as they came up…. An investigation was carried out, documents were studied, (documents) which are available, and the response was very clear. There is no sign of a personal involvement of the Holy Father in his matter.” Meaning to cover up.
But the details matter. Until the Vatican releases documents to explain why John Paul sheltered a notorious moral criminal, as the prosecution against Maciel stalled under the pope’s watch, his sainthood will be stalked with questions, a trailing credibility asterisk. Why not release the documents? Saints are people, people are sinners. “The Pope goes to confession like the rest of us,” wrote Flannery O’Connor. “The church is mighty realistic about human nature.”
Withholding information is what grubby politicians do. Whatever his flaws, John Paul, a saint come Sunday, deserves better than a continuing cover up.
So do People of God.
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