Faithful throng to Rome as 2 popes made saints

A devotee touches to pray at the statue of Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II on display with other relics of the late Pope as well as Pope John XXIII in celebration of their canonization or the elevation to sainthood Sunday, April 27, 2014, at suburban Quezon city, northeast of Manila, Philippines. Pope Francis declared his two predecessors John XXIII and John Paul II saints on Sunday before hundreds of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square, an unprecedented ceremony made even more historic by the presence of retired Pope Benedict XVI. The predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines joins several nations worldwide in the celebration of canonization of the two Popes. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
A devotee touches to pray at the statue of Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II on display with other relics of the late Pope as well as Pope John XXIII in celebration of their canonization or the elevation to sainthood Sunday, April 27, 2014, at suburban Quezon city, northeast of Manila, Philippines. Pope Francis declared his two predecessors John XXIII and John Paul II saints on Sunday before hundreds of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square, an unprecedented ceremony made even more historic by the presence of retired Pope Benedict XVI. The predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines joins several nations worldwide in the celebration of canonization of the two Popes. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

VATICAN CITY - Thousands of Polish pilgrims traveled Sunday to Rome for the canonization ceremony of John Paul II, driven by reverence for a towering historic figure and by national pride.

Some had met John Paul II, the first Polish pope, during his nearly 27-year papacy, which ended with his death in 2005. Others were too young to have vivid memories of the man described by Pope Francis on Sunday as “the pope of the family.”

But John Paul’s elevation to sainthood, along with Pope John XXIII, proved to be a unifying occasion.

“Polonia throughout the world is celebrating this exceptional event,” said Francis Gembala, a retired judge of Polish descent from Chicago, using the term for people of Polish origin who live outside Poland.

Gembala, who has a photo on his phone of a 1990 encounter with the pope, said that walking around Rome in recent days gave him the impression that the concentration of Poles in the Italian capital was second “only to Warsaw.”

“Everywhere you turn there are pilgrims,” he said, and when the Polish groups from different cities cross paths, “there is tremendous camaraderie.”

St. Peter’s Square was awash with white-and-red Polish flags Sunday morning, many identifying the hometowns of the pilgrims: from Darlowko and Szczecin to Kamien Krajenski, Stalowa Wola, Tarnow and Lebork.

More than 1,000 boys and girls representing numerous Polish Scout troops - fairly indistinguishable in their drab green or gray uniforms - arrived in Rome to participate in the ceremony, which was attended by 800,000 people, including those at the Vatican and others who watched on screens in various Rome squares, the Vatican press office said Sunday morning.

Kerchief-wearing pilgrims traveling with their priests, classes of seminarians and factory workers rented buses for the more than 930-mile drive to Rome from Poland. Many spent the night sleeping on the streets near the Vatican, hoping to get a good spot for the ceremony when people were admitted to the square at dawn.

“It wasn’t so bad, because there were lots of pilgrims from Poland so there were plenty of persons to talk to,” said Martyna Smietanska, a languages student at the University of Warsaw who planned to spend less than 24 hours in Rome. “I have classes to get back to, I can’t stay.”

The ceremony also drew Polish dignitaries, including President Bronislaw Komorowski, various members of Poland’s national and local governments, and Lech Walesa, the former president and Nobel laureate.

Last week, Italian and Vatican officials said that 1,700 buses, 58 charter flights and five special trains would arrive from Poland, but those estimates did not include the many pilgrims who made their own travel arrangements.

“Everyone in Poland is participating in some way in this moment,” said Katarzyna Martywiak, a travel agent who flew to Rome from Warsaw with a friend.

Celebrations took place throughout Poland on Sunday, especially in cities where John Paul, then known as Karol Wojtyla, lived and honed his ministry.

In the days leading up to the canonization, Rome’s Polish population organized a series of events in honor of John Paul II, including a standing-room-only concert Saturday evening at a Baroque church downtown by the popular Polish musician Stanislaw Soyka. He put to music a series of poems that John Paul published in a 2003 collection titled The Roman Triptych: Meditations.

His writings, as well as his life, have provided fodder for at least one play and three musicals - all in Italian - being staged in Rome on the occasion of his canonization.

But even as Poles took pride in John Paul’s origins, many emphasized his universal appeal.

At a commemorative Mass on Thursday evening at the Church of San Stanislao alle Botteghe Oscure, the downtown Rome church named after one of Poland’s patron saints, parishioners crowded around Floribeth Mora, the Costa Rican woman whose inexplicable cure after a brain aneurysm has been attributed by church investigators to the intercession of John Paul.

Speaking to the congregation, Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the chief church advocate for John Paul’s sainthood cause, mused on the causality that brought together Costa Rica and Poland, and on the breadth of the pope’s teachings.

The Rev. Andrzej Dobrzynski, who is responsible for the archives and research center at the Rome-based John Paul II Foundation, said: “For us Poles, his pontificate is clearly important. But the fact that he was appreciated by all the world, and by his successors, means he was a great man and a great Pole.”

The canonization of the two 20th-century popes who changed the course of the Catholic Church by Francis was seen as a delicate balancing act aimed at drawing together the conservative and progressive wings of the church.

As if to drive home the message of unity, Francis invited retired Pope Benedict XVI to join him on the altar of St. Peter’s Square, the first time a reigning and retired pope have celebrated Mass together in public in the 2,000-year history of the church.

Pope John XXIII reigned from 1958-1963 and is a hero to liberal Catholics for having convened the Second Vatican Council. The meetings moved the church into the modern era by allowing Mass to be celebrated in local languages rather than Latin and encouraged greater dialogue with people of other faiths, particularly Jews.

During his globetrotting, quarter-century papacy, John Paul II helped topple communism and invigorated a new generation of Catholics, while his defense of core church teaching on abortion, marriage and other hot-button issues heartened conservatives after the turbulent 1960s.

Benedict was one of John Paul’s closest confidants and went on to preside over a deeply tradition-minded eight-year papacy. His successor, Francis, seems a pope much more inspired by the pastoral, simple style of the “good pope” John.

Yet Francis offered each new saint heartfelt praise in his homily, saying John had allowed himself to be led by God to call the council, and hailing John Paul’s focus on the family. It’s an issue that Francis has asked the church as a whole to take up for discussion with a two-year debate starting this fall.

“They were priests, bishops and popes of the 20th century,” Francis said. “They lived through the tragic events of that century, but they were not overwhelmed by them.”

Benedict put John Paul on the fast track for possible sainthood just weeks after his 2005 death, responding to the chants of “Santo Subito!” or “Sainthood Now!” that arose during his funeral Mass. John Paul’s canonization is now the fastest in modern times.

In Latin America, tens of thousands of faithful celebrated the canonizations with pre-dawn vigils, music, prayer and much faith, especially for the Polish pontiff so beloved across the region.

John Paul was the main focus of the festivities, including in Costa Rica, where the church attributes to him the miraculous recovery of Mora, who had an inoperable brain aneurysm.

John Paul’s canonization also drew special attention in Mexico, where he is fondly remembered for his frequent visits to the region, but is also debated for his handling of sex-abuse scandals. A small parish church in Bahia, Brazil, was renamed in his honor: Our Lady of Alagados and St. John Paul II.

Starting Saturday night, nearly 20,000 Costa Ricans crowded into the capital of San Jose’s national stadium for a vigil and to watch the ceremony broadcast early Sunday from the Vatican on giant screens.

Many faithful carried photographs of John Paul, and vendors outside the stadium hawked tiny figurines of the late pontiff who visited Costa Rica in 1983.

A young Catholic named Carlos Cruz expressed “immense happiness that God has chosen this very beautiful country to carry out a miracle, something unexplainable.”

In Mexico City, the first city John Paul visited as the “traveling pope” in 1979, and where he returned on four more occasions, about 1,500 people kept vigil at the capital’s huge downtown cathedral.

Among them was Maria Elena Alba, 76, who had with her the prayers of others.

“I am sure they will be granted because the pope is quite miraculous,” she said. “I saw him four times and it was as if seeing God himself.”

More Mexican faithful prayed for the two new saints at the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, dedicated to a dark-skinned version of the Virgin Mary who is considered the patroness of the Americas.

“He moved many hearts around the world,” Maria Ines Rivera said of John Paul.

During his final visit to Mexico in 2002, John Paul canonized Juan Diego as the first indigenous saint in the Americas. The Virgin of Guadalupe is said to have appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 on a hill where an Aztec goddess was worshipped.

The canonizations also were celebrated across Brazil, the country with the most Catholics in the world with 123 million members.

In Poland, bells tolled across the nation and the crowds applauded in unison with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome when Francis declared the pontiff from Poland a saint.

John Paul remains a vital figure to many of his countrymen for having helped end communism in Poland, for his support of the Solidarity freedom movement that peacefully achieved that goal in 1989, and for his teachings about human rights and dignity.

“This is a great day for Poland, this is a great day for me,” said Maria Jurek from Katowice, her voice choked with emotion. “He changed Poland and he changed us with his teaching and with his visits here.” Information for this article was contributed by Elisabetta Povoledo of The New York Times; and by Daniela Petroff, Nicole Winfield, Monika Scislowska, Jim Gomez, Rene Casibang, Maria Verza, Javier Cordova, Adriana Gomez Licon and Anne-Marie Garcia of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/28/2014

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