The Vatican has announced that, following confirmation of a miracle, the late Pope John Paul II will be beatified on May 1. What better candidate could there be? This was a man of boundless moral conviction, to whom non-Catholics as well as Catholics should pay tribute for the way he hacked away at the foundations of Communism. He was a formidable scholar and – in some ways most impressive of all – as brave as a lion in carrying out his duties while in the grip of a paralysing disease.
But… several Catholics have told me that beatifying a Pope a mere six years after his death gives the impression that the process is being “helped along” a little too fast. As one friend put it: “We’re reaching a stage where beatification for recently dead Popes is like a life peerage for ex-Prime Ministers. It focuses attention on the ones who don’t receive the honour, and you wonder: what did they do wrong?”
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