Beatification of Pope Johm Paul II

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A tapestry bearing a 1995 picture of late Pope John Paul II hangs from St. Peter's Basilica's Lodge of the Blessings during a solemn celebration led by Pope Benedict XVI, where he was beatified in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, May 1, 2011, in the fastest beatification in modern times. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Some 1.5 million pilgrims flooded Rome to watch Pope John Paul II move a step closer to sainthood in one of the largest Vatican Masses in history, an outpouring of adoration for a beloved and historic figure after years marred by church scandal.

The turnout for the beatification Sunday far exceeded even the most optimistic expectation of 1 million people, the number Rome city officials predicted. For Catholics filling St. Peter’s Square and its surrounding streets, and for those watching around the world the beatification was a welcome hearkening back to the days when the pope was almost universally beloved.

“He was like a king to us, like a father,” Marynka Ulaszewska, a 28-year-old from Ciechocinek, Poland, said, weeping. “I hope these emotions will remain with us for a long time,” she said.

Pope Benedict XVI praised John Paul for turning back the seemingly “irreversible” tide of communism with faith, courage and “the strength of a titan, a strength which came to him from God.”

John Paul is universally credited with helping bring down communism in his native Poland with support for the Solidarity labor movement, accelerating the fall of the Iron Curtain.

“He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of

hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress,” Benedict said. “He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope.”

John Paul’s beatification, the fastest in modern times, has however triggered a new wave of anger from sex-abuse victims because much of the criminality occurred during his 27-year watch. Critics also say John Paul’s legacy is clouded by evidence of a dwindling faith: empty churches in Europe, too few priests in North and South America, priests who violate their celibacy requirement in places like Africa and a general decline of Catholicism in former Christian strongholds.

John Paul’s defenders argue that an entire generation of new priests owe their vocations to John Paul, and that millions of lay Catholics found their faith during the World Youth Days, which were a hallmark of his papacy.

Vatican officials have insisted that the saint-making process isn’t a judgment of how John Paul administered the church but rather whether he lived a life of Christian virtue.

Benedict put John Paul on the fast-track for possible sainthood when he dispensed with the traditional five-year waiting period and allowed the beatification process to begin weeks after his April 2, 2005, death. Benedict was responding to chants of “Santo Subito!” or “Sainthood Immediately” which erupted during John Paul’s funeral.

With a sea of red and white Polish flags fluttering in the square, the beatification Sunday evoked the days after the pope’s death in 2005, when some 3 million faithful held vigil under his studio window and filed past his remains for days on end.

Pilgrims from Mexico to Mali repeated the procession after the Mass Sunday, for hours filing past the simple wooden coffin that had been raised from the grottoes underneath St. Peter’s Basilica to the church’s center aisle, where it was surrounded by four Swiss Guards standing at attention.

Beatification is the last major milestone before a candidate is declared a saint. John Paul needs another miracle attributed to his intercession before he can be canonized.

Already, Vatican officials have said reports of inexplicable cures were pouring in, suggesting it is only a matter of time before John Paul is declared a saint, or even a doctor of the church — an even greater honor.

Police placed wide swaths of Rome miles (kilometers) from the Vatican off limits to private cars to ensure security for the estimated 16 heads of state, eight prime ministers and five members of European royal houses attending.

Helicopters flew overhead, police boats patrolled the nearby Tiber River and some 5,000 uniformed troops manned police barricades to ensure priests, official delegations and those with coveted VIP passes could get to their places amid the throngs of pilgrims.

Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia, wearing a black lace mantilla, mingled with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, Poland’s historic Solidarity leader and former President Lech Walesa and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who sidestepped a European Union travel ban to attend.

“He went all over the world,” said Bishop Jean Zerbo of Bamako, Mali, who came to Rome for the ceremony. “Today, we’re coming to him.”

Many in Rome and in capitals around the world erupted in cheers, tears and applause as Benedict pronounced John Paul “Blessed” and an enormous color photo of a young, smiling John Paul was unveiled over the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica.

“John Paul is an angel, he has such charisma,” said Esperanza Concilion, a 69-year-old hairdresser who traveled from Guadalajara, Mexico for the beatification.

Catholics jammed churches from Mexico to Australia to pray and watch broadcasts of the Rome Mass on television.

“He was a model and an inspiration who united the world with his extraordinary charisma,” said John Paul Bustillo, a 16-year-old medical student named after the pontiff who turned out Sunday along with more than 3,000 others for a six-mile (10-kilometer) race followed by a Mass near Manila Bay in the Philippines.

In Brazil, which has more Roman Catholics than any other nation, the beatification resonated among the faithful and sparked hope that it might renew faith in the church in the South American nation which is facing stiff competition for souls from evangelical Protestant movements.

“The beatification is going to renovate the faith of those who may have lost their way and left the church,” said Adimir Godoy, as he left a Sunday mass at the Santa Cecilia church in central Sao Paulo. “We were all blessed by the life of Pope John Paul and he deserves to be a saint.”

In John Paul’s native Poland, tens of thousands of people gathered in rain in a major sanctuary in Krakow and in Wadowice, where the pontiff was born in 1920 as Karol Wojtyla. Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his wife Malgorzata watched the ceremony together with Wadowice residents.

In Panama, Roman Catholic authorities laid the first stone of a chapel that will be built in honor of the late pope. The site in Albrook marks the spot where John Paul II held a mass during his 1983 visit to the Central American country.

In the United States. many churches held special masses and other programs to honor the first pope to connect widely with American Catholics, especially young believers.

At Denver’s Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, a statue of Pope John Paul II was adorned with flowers left by parishioners. Inside, tulips were placed next to a picture of the pope, who visited Denver in August 1993 to celebrate World Youth Day VIII.

“For most of my life, he was the pope,” said the Rev. Matthew Hartley told those gathered for a mass celebrating John Paul’s beatification.

Joy Armbruster said she was there when the pope visited in 1993.

“I’m of Polish descent. Because of that, I always felt a kinship to the pope,” Armbruster said, tears welling up. “Just to be in the presence of a man like that. When he walked into the room, the atmosphere changed.”

Before the service three members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests handed out fliers asking for help in protecting children for sexual abuse. SNAP leader Jeb Barrett says his group has passed out fliers in three Denver-area parishes.

At Chicago’s Five Holy Martyrs Church, there was an outdoor celebratory Mass on Sunday afternoon with musicians in traditional Polish folk clothing. John Paul II celebrated an open-air Mass at the church on Oct. 5, 1979, during a visit to Chicago.

After the nearly three-hour Mass in Rome, Benedict prayed before John Paul’s coffin, which had a copy of the Lorsch Gospels on it, an illuminated medieval book of the Gospels that is one of the most precious in the Vatican’s collection.

The basilica was expected to stay open for as long as it takes to accommodate the throngs of faithful who paid their respects and took photos as loudspeakers piped in hymns and clips of some of John Paul’s most memorable homilies and speeches.

The sealed coffin will ultimately be moved to a side chapel inside the basilica just next to Michelangelo’s famous marble “Pieta” statue.

Police put the figure of those attending the Mass at 1.5 million; only a few hundred thousand could fit into St. Peter’s Square and the surrounding streets but others watched it on some of the 14 huge TV screens set up around town or listened to it on radios in Polish or Italian.

During the Mass, Benedict received a silver reliquary holding a vial of blood taken from John Paul during his final hospitalization. The relic, a key feature of beatification ceremonies, will be available for the faithful to venerate.

It was presented to him by Sister Tobiana, the Polish nun who tended to John Paul throughout his pontificate, and Sister Marie Simone-Pierre of France, whose inexplicable recovery from Parkinson’s disease was decreed to be the miracle necessary for John Paul to be beatified.

____

Associated Press writers Daniela Petroff in Vatican City, Juan Zamorano in Panama City, Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo, Jim Gomez in Manila, Monika Scislowska in Krakow, P. Solomon Banda in Denver and Caryn Rousseau in Chicago contributed to this story.

Source the DailyCaller

Video:  Raw Video: Pope Benedict Beatifies John Paul II

Nine Days That Changed the World by Newt Gingrich

CATHOLICS WORLDWIDE CELEBRATE BEATIFICATION OF POPE JOHN PAUL II

Walesa's Warning

Leaders: The champion of Polish freedom tells America it's no longer that shining city on a hill. As it slouches toward socialism, he warns, those yearning to breathe free in the world can no longer look to the U.S. for help.

They were the giants of their age. Together, President Ronald Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and a little known shipyard worker named Lech Walesa stood up to Soviet communism and brought freedom to the captive nations of Europe.

Last Friday, Walesa was in Chicago campaigning for a GOP gubernatorial candidate in the Illinois primary who happened to be Polish. Arguably the father of Polish democracy, Walesa knows a little bit about tyranny, socialism and the slippery path to both, and came to warn us about the path we've been on.

In a press conference, Walesa commented on an America that seemingly apologizes for everything these days, cajoles rather than confronts the thugs of the world and is embarked on a path to shackle beyond redemption the free economy that led the Free World to victory.

He no longer thinks we are the last best hope for mankind.

"The United States is only one superpower. Today they lead the world. Nobody has doubts about it, militarily," the Polish leader said. "They also lead economically, but they're getting weak.

"But they don't lead morally and politically anymore. The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States. Today, we lost that hope."

Walesa led the Solidarity movement in Poland. He was in a sense a community organizer, but not in the mold of a Saul Alinsky. He sought to liberate his people, not control them.

The marches and protests that led to Polish freedom were a precursor to America's tea party movement that likewise seeks to throw off the chains of a command-and-control society and restore genuine economic and political freedom.

The Soviet empire had its commissars. Our government has its czars, and Walesa definitely feels the America that was his friend is moving in the wrong direction. He sees our quest for redistribution of income as not different from the Marxist credo — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

In a video-taped interview, Walesa saw a hint of socialism creeping into America's domestic policies. He spoke of "the issue with the banks" and how "the government wastes all the money ... building a bureaucracy — just for itself."

Indeed, it seems the only growth sector in the U.S. is its government and the unions that exist not for the prosperity and freedom of their members, but for the power and influence of their leaders.

Poland had Lech Walesa. We have the SEIU's Andy Stern ,who says that if those who disagree with command-and-control government do not bow to the power of persuasion, they will bow to the persuasion of power.

It has been a long journey for Walesa from the Gdansk Lenin Shipyards to Chicago's Back of the Yards. He's the man who turned an illegal independent trade union into a force for freedom in communist Poland. He served as Poland's president from 1990 to 1995.

He has witnessed a lot of history and knows when people refuse to learn from it.

In Walesa's view, something needs to be done to restore America's strength and leadership. America, in his view, is too big to fail.

Lech Walesa – USA No Longer Has Leadership… America Was the Last Hope

Obama and the Great Game

by  Patrick J. Buchanan

The day before Richard Holbrooke arrived in Kabul, eight suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Justice and Education ministries, killing 26 and wounding 57.

Kabul was paralyzed, as the Taliban displayed an ability to wreak havoc within a hundred yards of the presidential palace.

The assault came as President Obama is both conducting a strategic review and deciding how many additional U.S. troops to send.

Earlier, there was talk of 30,000, bringing the U.S. total to 63,000. Now, there are reports Obama may commit no more than the three brigades promised in 2008, and only one brigade now.

Clearly, the United States is checking its hole card. Can we draw to a winning hand? Or is this hand an inevitable loser -- and we must cut our losses and cede the pot? No longer, anywhere, is there talk of "victory."

Nor is the diplomatic news good.

Last week, Kyrgyzstan gave us six months to vacate Manas, the air base used to resupply U.S. forces. A week before, guerrillas blew up a bridge in the Khyber, cutting the 1,000-mile supply line from Karachi to Kabul. Before that, guerrillas bombed U.S. truck parks in Pakistan.

While in Pakistan, Holbrooke was told by all to whom he spoke that, while U.S. Predator strikes may be killing Taliban and al-Qaida, the deaths among tribal peoples are turning Pakistan against us.

What would winning Afghanistan for democracy profit us, if the price were losing a nuclear-armed Pakistan to Islamism?

The expulsion from Manas, after Kyrgyzstan received a reported $2 billion in aid from Moscow, raises a question.

Is Russia restarting "The Great Game" she played against Victoria's Empire in Central Asia, which ended in 1907 with a British-Russian entente, dividing Iran into spheres of influence, with both sides agreeing to keep hands off Afghanistan?

As Russia has as great an interest in preventing an Islamist Kabul, and has assisted NATO's resupply of its forces, why would Moscow seek to expel us from a base vital to the war effort?

Does Russia simply seek to be recognized by the United States as the hegemon of Central Asia, the sole great power that decides who can and who cannot use former Soviet bases?

For if Manas is closed and the Karachi-Khyber-Kabul supply line is compromised or cut, Obama would seem to have but three options.

First would be to go back, hat-in-hand, to Islam Karimov, the Uzbek ruler charged with grave human rights violations, and ask him to reopen the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) air base, from which we were expelled in 2005. And what would be Karimov's asking price?

Second is the Russia option. If Moscow now holds the whip hand in the old Soviet republics, what is Moscow's price to let us remain in Manas or use other Soviet bases over which it wields veto power?

The answer is obvious. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine is to be brought into NATO. The independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, won in the August war with Georgia, is not to be challenged. The U.S anti-missile missiles planned for Poland are not to be deployed.

In turn, Russia will cancel any missile deployment in Kaliningrad, recommits to the terms of all conventional forces agreements in Europe and assist in the effort in Afghanistan. Russia rejoins the West, and the West stays off Russia's front porch.

Be not surprised if the Russians come trolling before an overextended American empire an end to the Great Game in Central Asia like the one the ministers of Nicholas II offered the ministers of Edward VII.

And the third option? It is Iran.

Before 9-11, Iran was more hostile to the anti-Shia Taliban than we, and it has no desire to see them return. Indeed, Tehran was a supporter of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as both were ruled by mortal enemies.

The long way for U.S. and NATO war materiel to reach Kabul via Iran would be through a Turkey-Kurdistan-Iran supply line. The shorter would be from Iranian ports straight into Afghanistan.

Price of an entente? An end to the 30-year U.S.-Iranian cold war and a strategic bargain whereby Iran is allowed to develop peaceful nuclear power, under supervision, the United States lifts its embargo, and regime change is left to the Iranian people.

President Ahmadinejad, no fool, and facing an uncertain election this year, is already signaling interest in negotiations with Obama.

A complication. How would "Bibi" Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman regard a U.S.-Iran rapprochement -- to prevent a Taliban triumph in Kabul?

Yet, if the Taliban's enemies in Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia will not assist us, this war cannot end well. And if they will not help, Obama should cut America's losses, come home and let their neighbors deal with a triumphant Taliban.