Saturday, March 17, 2007

Ex-Pope aide wants John Paul made a saint directly

Sat Mar 17, 2007 12:02 AM IST

WARSAW (Reuters) - The former top aide to the late Pope John Paul has renewed his call for prompt sainthood for the Polish-born pontiff, saying that the usual procedure was too narrow an honour for a man whose good deeds spanned the globe.

Pope Benedict has already put John Paul on the fast track to sainthood by opening an inquiry into beatifying him -- a step just short of the top honour -- soon after his death in April 2005 rather than waiting five years as Church law prescribes.

But Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was John Paul's personal secretary during his 1978-2005 papacy, told the Warsaw daily Dziennik the Church should jump from that unfinished intermediate step and make him a saint straight away.

Beatification makes the person a subject of veneration in single locations while sainthood applies to the whole world. In Pope John Paul's case, those locations would be Rome and Krakow in southern Poland, where he served before his election in 1978.

Dziwisz, the current archbishop of Krakow, said: "John Paul is owned by the whole world."
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