Pope John Paul II, the beloved pope who died in 2005, is on the road to sainthood: The AP reports that Pope Benedict XVI "set May 1 as the date for John Paul's beatification — a key step toward Catholicism's highest honor and a major morale boost for a church reeling from the clerical sex abuse scandal."
A French nun proclaimed that she recovered from Parkinson's after Pope John Paul II interceded, and doctors have not found a cause for her sudden much-better health, so that was miracle number one. However, in order for Pope John Paul II to become a saint, there needs to be a second miracle. The AP also adds that the new honors are "not without controversy, however. While John Paul himself was never accused of improprieties, he has long been accused of responding slowly when the sex abuse scandal erupted in the United States in 2002. Many of the thousands of cases that emerged last year involved crimes and cover-ups that occurred on his 26-year watch. Critics have faulted John Paul's overriding concern with preserving the rights of accused priests, often at the expense of victims — a concern formed in part by his experiences in Communist-controlled Poland where priests were often accused of trumped up charges by the regime."
NY Archbishop Timothy Dolan told the Daily News, "Pope John Paul visited New York three times - twice as Pope, and once when he was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Krakow. In many ways we consider him to have been an honorary citizen of what he famously referred to as 'The Capital of the World.'" CNN's Belief blog offers nine reasons why Pope John Paul II mattered.
