Just posted to our Web site, a call for the canonication of Pope John Paul I:
On the Third Sunday of Easter, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed John Paul II a blessed, a milestone in the late pope’s journey to sainthood. The speed at which Karol Wojtyla’s cause for canonization has progressed is singular. Under the church’s rules, the process cannot begin until a candidate has been deceased at least five years, but Pope Benedict dispensed with that requirement in this instance.
Not so with John Paul’s namesake and immediate predecessor, Albino Luciani, whose own cause, initiated nearly eight years ago, still sluggishly wends its way through the labyrinthine Vatican bureaucracy, its ultimate resolution still in doubt.
For those whose faith was rekindled by that gentle pope, the lingering uncertainty about his canonization is disheartening. Albino Luciani’s life was so exemplary that it could inspire a world grown weary and cynical and yearning for the “greater gifts” and a “more excellent way.”
“He passed as a meteor which unexpectedly lights up the heavens and then disappears, leaving us amazed and astonished,” Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri aptly observed at the pope’s funeral Mass in 1978.
Read the rest here.
Tim Reidy
Pope Paul had lived through the War and had spent many many years in the Vatican.
The book by Hebblewaithe showed us many sides to Pope Paul but did not show so clearly us that no other Pope had lived through such a turbulent time.
His 15 years were from 63-78 and in that period all of the problems of the sexual revolution and the falling of the old order came to light.
He would never by temperament have been a happy Pope but he served the Church perhaps better than anybody.He poured himself into running the curia and to finishing the council.
Those who prize the texts of the council owe a debt to Montini.Luciani though, I think had his priorities more in place.
Most Popes can speak of God all day long and nobody bats an eyelid but when Roncalli or Luciani spoke of him it was so real as to be astonishing.This was not a suffering God.This God was not hung up about our moral failings but was loving and bigger in heart than us and our failings. Someday God may let us see the path of Luciani more closely.I hope so .......
What you wrote is indeed good and puts focus on a great man. I sometimes think Montini was the kind of Pope that was needed 63-78. There were so many tensions and cross-currents in the Church and I think Montini's own personality absorbed these and in many ways helped to contain the various "factions" which were emerging and struggling. Perhaps a pope as confident and sure of things as JPII would have led to some schisms? I don't know. But I think Montini had accurate empathy with even the positions he disagreed with and I think even those who disagreed with him knew that and gave him credit for working to keep the Church together. I suspect he suffered keenly internally/psychologically. (And let's remember how communism was an immiennt and brooding force across the world and in his own Italy). Perhaps in fututure centuries he will be looked back on as being a heroic kind of Pope-a saint? bill