VATICAN CITY
Latin Times
By Susmita Baral | Apr 22 2014
Pope John Paul II (né Karol Józef Wojtyła) and Pope John XXIII (né Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli) are scheduled to be declared saints by the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday, Apr. 27, 2014 in Rome. The canonization process will be led by the current pontiff, Pope Francis, at the Catholic capital, which is estimated to receive 3 million visitors to celebrate the occasion.
Many have said that Pope John Paul II–the Polish pontiff led the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005–was the obvious choice for sainthood but there is more to being declared a saint than winning a popularity contest. According to the church, a pontiff must have two church-verified miracles attributed to him in order to be considered for sainthood.
For Pope John Paul II, the two miracles attributed were a French nun claiming to be cured from Parkinson’s and a Costa Rican woman being cured from a fatal brain aneurysm. Even Pope Francis gave testimony, in 2005, to support the sainthood of Pope John Paul II. “John Paul II taught us, by hiding nothing from others, to suffer and to die, and that, in my opinion, is heroic,” said Pope Francis, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Pope John Paul II’s legacy is not all miracles and words of praise from Pope Francis, as his involvement with Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, a Mexican-born Roman Catholic priest and the founder of Christ’s Legionaries, has proven to be controversial, to say the least. The allegations against Pope John Paul II is that he, and his papacy, ignored the credible claims that late Maciel was a pedophile, drug addict, con artist, and religious fraud.
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