Vatican congregation approves miracle, opening door to Paul VI’s canonization

February 6, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Vatican City, Feb 6, 2018 / 10:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the second miracle needed for the canonization of Blessed Pope Paul VI, allowing his canonization to take place, possibly later this year.

According to Vatican Insider, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the miracle by a unanimous vote Feb. 6. The next step is for Pope Francis to also give his approval, with an official decree from the Vatican. Then the date for the canonization can be set.

The miracle attributed to the cause of Paul VI is the healing of an unborn child in the fifth month of pregnancy. The case was brought forward in 2014 for study.

The mother, originally from the province of Verona, Italy, had an illness that risked her own life and the life of her unborn child, and was advised to have an abortion.

A few days after the beatification of Paul VI on Oct. 19, 2014, she went to pray to him at the Shrine of Holy Mary of Grace in the town of Brescia. The baby girl was later born in good health, and remains in good health today.

The healing was first ruled as medically inexplicable by the medical council of the congregation last year, while the congregation’s consulting theologians agreed that the healing occurred through the late pope’s intercession.

Today’s meeting with cardinals was the final step before Cardinal Angelo Amato, head of the congregation, will take the miracle to Pope Francis, who has the final say in its approval.

After the Pope issues a decree approving it, the date of the canonization will be announced during a consistory. According to Vatican Insider, the canonization may take place in October of this year, during the Synod of Bishops on the youth.

The miracle for Paul VI’s canonization echoes that of his beatification. That first miracle took place in the 1990s in California. A then-unborn child was found to have a serious health problem that posed a high risk of brain damage. Physicians advised that the child be aborted, but the mother entrusted her pregnancy to Paul VI.

The child was born without problems and is now a healthy adolescent. He is considered to be completely healed.

Pope Paul’s cause for canonization was opened in 1993. In December 2012, Pope Benedict XVI recognized the “heroic virtue” of Paul VI, giving him the title “venerable.” He was beatified in Rome on Oct. 19, 2014.

Paul VI was born Giovanni Montini in 1897 in the town of Concesio in the Lombardy region of Italy. He was ordained a priest at the age of 22. He served as Archbishop of Milan before his election as Pope in 1963. He died in 1978.

As pope, he oversaw much of the Second Vatican Council, which had been opened by Pope St. John XXIII. He also promulgated a new Roman Missal in 1969.

Paul VI published the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, which reaffirmed the Church’s teaching against contraception and reaffirmed the merits of priestly celibacy.

 

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Pope taps Scicluna to investigate Barros accusations

January 30, 2018 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Jan 30, 2018 / 07:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After recently affirming his support for a Chilean bishop accused of covering up sexual abuse, Pope Francis has named a delegate to examine information that, the Vatican said, has since been brought forward.

According to a Jan. 30 Vatican statement, “following some information recently received regarding the case of Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid,” the Pope has asked Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna of Malta to travel to Santiago “to listen to those who have expressed the desire to submit items in their possession.”

In addition to overseeing the Diocese of Malta, Scicluna in 2015 was named by the Pope to oversee the doctrinal team charged with handling appeals filed by clergy accused of abuse in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Scicluna served as the congregation’s Promoter of Justice for 17 years, beginning in 1995. He is widely regarded for his expertise in the canonical norms governing allegations of sexual abuse.

The Pope’s decision to send Scicluna to Santiago follows comes after fresh controversy on the appointment arose during Pope Francis’ Jan. 15-18 visit to Chile.

Francis named Barros as head of the Osorno diocese in Chile in 2015. The move continues to draw harsh criticism from activists and abuse victims who accuse the bishop of covering up the crimes of his longtime friend, Father Fernando Karadima.

Karadima, who once led a lay movement from his parish in El Bosque, was convicted of sexually abusing minors in a 2011 Vatican trial, and at the age of 84, he was sentenced to a life of prayer and solitude.

Barros has repeatedly insisted that he knew nothing of the abuse, and Pope Francis has backed him, naming him head of the Diocese of Osorno in southern Chile in 2015.

The decision set off a wave of objections and calls for his resignation from several priests. Dozens of protesters, including non-Catholics, attempted to disrupt his March 21, 2015 installation Mass at the Osorno cathedral. However, Francis has insisted on keeping Barros in his post.

On his last day in Chile, before heading to Peru, the Pope responded to a Chilean journalist who asked about the Barros issue, saying “the day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak. There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”

The comment was met with uproar from Barros’ critics, several of whom are victims of  Karadima’s abuse. It also prompted Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, one of the Pope’s nine cardinal advisors and head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, to release a statement saying the words were painful to victims.

When asked about it by reporters on his Jan. 21 flight back to Rome, Pope Francis apologized, saying “the word ‘proof’ was not the best in order to draw near to a suffering heart.”

He asked for forgiveness from victims he may have wounded, saying any unintentional harm he may have caused “horrified” him, especially after having met with victims in Chile and in other trips, such as his visit to Philadelphia in 2015.

“I know how much they suffer, to feel that the Pope says in their face ‘bring me a letter, proof,’ it’s a slap,” he said.

Francis also said he is aware that victims may not have brought evidence forward either because it is not available, or because they are perhaps frightened or ashamed.

He insisted that Barros’ case “was studied, it was re-studied, and there is no evidence…That is what I wanted to say. I have no evidence to condemn him. And if I condemn him without evidence or without moral certainty, I would commit the crime of a bad judge.”

“If a person comes and gives me evidence,” he said, “I am the first to listen to him. We should be just.”

[…]

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