Blessed John Paul II: 'God's man'
It's been eagerly anticipated for years. Now it's a reality. Pope John Paul II will be beatified May 1. Here's a small snip from the official decree issued today in Rome:
Pope John Paul II waves to an estimated 60,000 people in Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore Oct. 8, 1995. The liturgy was held during the pope's 1995 pastoral visit to America. (CNS file photo by Nancy Wiechec)
John Paul II’s pontificate was an eloquent and clear sign, not only for Catholics, but also for world public opinion, for people of all colour and creed. The world’s reaction to his lifestyle, to the development of his apostolic mission, to the way he bore his suffering, to the decision to continue his Petrine mission to the end as willed by divine Providence, and finally, the reaction to his death, the popularity of the acclamation “Saint right now!” which someone made on the day of his funerals, all this has its solid foundation in the experience of having met with the person who was the Pope. The faithful have felt, have experienced that he is “God’s man”, who really sees the concrete steps and the mechanisms of contemporary world “in God”, in God’s perspective, with the eyes of a mystic who looks up to God only. He was clearly a man of prayer: so much so that it is from the dynamism of his personal union with God, from the permanent listening to what God wants to say in a concrete situation, that the whole of “Pope John Paul II’s activity” flowed.
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1/14/2011 7:31:08 AM
By George Matysek