Just days after the death of Pope John Paul II, “cardinals
eager to uphold his conservative policies had already begun discussing putting
him on a fast track to sainthood.”[1]
This alone could have alerted religionists as to the possible sanctification of
an ideology within the Roman Catholic Church. The force of an ideology to its
partisans can render them deaf to other considerations. The church ideologues
clamoring for the ages-old process of canonization to be disregarded—hardly a
conservative demand—chose not to hear the “notes of caution from survivors of
sexual abuse and historians that John Paul had persistently turned a blind eye
to the crimes in his church.”[2]
Fifteen years later, the Vatican itself admitted that the former pope had known
of the crimes of Archbishop (of New York) Theodore McCarrick yet refused to put
a stop to them. “The investigation, commissioned by Pope Francis, who canonized
John Paul in 2014, revealed how John Paul chose not to believe longstanding
accusations of sexual abuse against [McCarrick], including pedophilia, allowing
him to climb the hierarchy’s ladder.”[3]
Rather than being a mere mistake in judgment, as some conservatives would argue,
the decision to look the other way resulted in great evil. The foreseeable
consequences meant that John Paul II allowed more rapes to happen. Besides the
rather obvious point that a saint would not have done so, and thus the
canonization of John Paul II was erroneous, this case suggests that the “two
miracles” requirement for canonization is itself flawed.
The full essay is at "On the Canonization of Pope John Paul II."
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.