Local Catholics, particularly in the Polish community, are celebrating an announcement of the scheduled May 1 beatification of the late Pope John Paul II, which is a key step in achieving sainthood.
"He was beloved, not just by Poles, but around the world," said Jim Gubbins, an assistant professor and religious scholar at Salem State University.
Pope John Paul II, who was born Karol Wojtyla in Poland, served as pope for 27 years until his death in 2005.
Beatification comes after the confirmation of a miracle accomplished in the pontiff's name. Prayers to the former pope are credited with curing a French nun of Parkinson's disease, the same disease from which he suffered. A second miracle is needed to complete the church process of canonization, making Pope John Paul II a saint.
"That's going to meet with great approval," said former state auditor and probate judge Thaddeus M. Buczko of Salem, the first Polish-American elected to statewide office in Massachusetts. "There's a great deal of anticipation. People want the process speeded up."
The Vatican announced yesterday that John Paul II's successor, Pope Benedict XVI, had approved the move.
Gubbins said John Paul II was both a man of the modern age and a traditionalist. Where some popes were rather insular, "he traveled the world and would hold these huge rallies. He helped Third World churches and made Third World bishops into cardinals," Gubbins said.
At the same time, he championed the church's oldest doctrines on matters like the ordination of female priests.
Gubbins, who is not a practicing Catholic, laments the inability of some to see that church leaders, by virtue of their position at the head of an institution spanning two millennia, often take the long view on such matters.
One of John Paul II's major contributions was his opposition to the 20th century's twin tyrannies of Nazism and communism.
He took risks and was an intellectual who read widely and wrote, Gubbins said.
"He was heroic," Gubbins said. "He was an extraordinary person."
Many believe John Paul II's outspoken anti-totalitarianism led to an assassination attempt in 1981. Shot four times, the pope barely survived. Subsequently, he visited the would-be assassin in prison and offered forgiveness.
Teresa Prochorski attends St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in Salem, but she was a young woman in Poland as the predominantly Catholic country united behind the Solidarity labor union against the Warsaw government and its Soviet backers in the 1980s.
Amid the strife, Pope John Paul II made several trips to his homeland.
"He shook our hands," Prochorski recalled of a brief personal encounter. "He touched everybody's heart. I remember his words. He told us that we are the future of the world and of the church."
Prochorski became part of the movement, producing leaflets to spread the word.
"It was illegal," she said, noting that previous generations of Poles had been arrested and given long prison terms for such things. "The pope asked that we never use violence. That we use good words and good deeds."
If John Paul II is eventually elevated to the status of saint, it will be a confirmation "that miracles happen ... and a proof to the world that God exists," Prochorski said.
"I believe he was a saint when he was here on Earth," she said.
The former pontiff will be officially beatified barely six years after his death — the quickest anyone has been bestowed the honor in modern times.
Buczko saw John Paul II's very elevation to pope as a kind of miracle. He once hosted the then-Cardinal Wojtyla on a visit to Boston. He recalls speaking to him, and the two conversed in both Polish and English.
Wojtyla offered an extravagant tribute during a meal at Jimmy's Harborside restaurant in Boston, suggesting Buczko might go on to become the first Polish-American president. When the auditor returned the favor, predicting Wojtyla would become a successor to St. Peter, he didn't really expect it to happen. There hadn't been a non-Italian pope in many centuries.
"I guess it was the right guess at the right time," Buczko said yesterday.
Buczko said that when he visited Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, the pontiff remembered especially his second visit to Boston in 1979.
"He talked very fondly of it," Buczko said. "He spoke on the Boston Common, and it was raining cats and dogs. And there were thousands of people waiting in the rain."
Despite John Paul II's exalted status, Buczko said, "he was a very warm human being. He made you feel comfortable in his presence."
Lola Busta, an active member of Peabody's Polish Catholic community, still retains a banner from that day the pope visited Boston. She stood before the pope, knelt and kissed his ring. The man had an impact on his followers that she said is hard to describe.
"It was in the way he looked at people, the way he was so open to people," she said, then paused. "I wouldn't have missed it. ... I see him as a saint now. That's the way I look at it."
Critics have found fault with Pope John Paul II's dealing with the priest sex-abuse scandal, but his advocates don't think it's disqualifying.
"It actually goes down to the ordinary priest in charge of the parish," Busta said.
"I can't criticize him for this," Prochorski said, noting the difficulty of judging what the pope knew and what he didn't. "What is true? What's not?"
Gubbins agrees that the pope's responsibility is hard to gauge.
"But blame will attach to him as much as he in his role ... appears not to have pursued the matter," Gubbins said. "He will be held responsible, rightly or wrongly, for not doing enough."
Yet, he stresses, some of John Paul II's critics fail to see his contribution to the inner life of Catholics. He was a spiritual leader, helping to provide something too little appreciated in the modern world, yet vital and sustaining.
"And for a lot of people that gets lost," Gubbins said.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Pope John Paul II
Born: Karol Wojtyla in 1920, in Poland
Papacy: 1978-2005 (27 years)
Died: April 2, 2005, at 84
Beatification: The ceremony is scheduled for May 1, the first Sunday after Easter, in Rome
Did you know? Such a "fast track" to sainthood is unusual, but not unprecedented. In fact, John Paul II did the same for Mother Teresa, who died in 1997 and was beatified in 2003. His own elevation will beat out hers for the title of quickest by a matter of days.
Source: Associated Press
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