No other way

Popes John XXIII and John Paul II could be canonized as saints together, possibly this December 8, La Stampa newspaper of Rome reported. That day is the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The Congregation for Causes of Saints met Tuesday, said the Vatican Press Office. But it didn’t comment on an Associated Press report that members formalized their recommendation to canonize Pope John Paul II. All proceedings of sainthood causes are secret until the pope issues the relevant decrees.

Filipinos feel a special affinity for John Paul II. He first visited here in 1981 and told a poker-faced dictator Ferdinand Marcos to his face: “Government cannot claim to serve the common good when human rights are not safeguarded.” During the Marcos years, there were 3,257 extrajudicial killings, 35,000 torture victims, and 70,000 imprisoned, historian Alfred McCoy notes in a Yale University study. That dark legacy hobbles Ferdinand Jr.’s bid to seek the presidency in 2016.

Pope John Paul II presided over the World Youth Day at Rizal Park in January 1995. Over four million attended the closing Mass. That’s the current world record for the largest papal gathering.

Filipinos will host Pope Francis on January 2016. He’ll attend the 51st International Eucharistic Congress in Cebu City. An advance team is here to finalize details. Filipinos will look beyond church institutional deadwood and identify with Pope Francis concerns for the poor.

The likelihood then is that of a two-John canonization. That will further fan an ongoing debate where laymen and scholars compare the man who’ll be honored and the pontiff who’ll preside over the ancient rites.

“From the moment of his introduction to the world as Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio resembled Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, or Pope John XXIII, more than any other pontiff,” John Borelli of Georgetown University wrote in the international Catholic weekly: “The Tablet”.

Both were 76 when elected. Roncalli’s electors figured on a short-term caretaker – 54 months it turned out. But John XXIII stunned everyone by convening the Second Vatican Council. Only 20 such general councils met in the last two thousand years.

Pope Francis turns 77 this December. Barely less than 200 days on the chair of St. Peter, he is correcting the church’s immediate past, as did John XXIII. He is also setting directions for the future, notably implementing stalled Vatican II reforms.

Pope Benedict was 78 when elected, recalls Eugene Cullen Kennedy professor of psychology at Loyola University, Chicago “Benedict XVI spent eight long – and I mean long – years as our Holy Father. Francis “entered our lives only a season ago.” So, why does Francis seem like someone we’ve known him a long time? Of Benedict, we fall back on the Irish saying that “we hardly knew ye”.

John and Francis resemble each other most in their being anything but themselves. “By its very nature, that quality cannot be faked. As they did about John XXIII, people sense there is no pretense that keeps them from an easy relationship with Francis.”

Almost overnight, Francis began to restore credibility of the church just by being himself. He washed the feet of prisoners, including a Muslim woman, at the Holy Thursday liturgy. Thus, “he panicked far-right Catholics but spoke of true religion to the world.”

The act spoke more of Francis understanding of Islam than the learned (but often misunderstood ) theologically dense addresses of Benedict XVI. “That, alas, was not Benedict’s strong suit,” Kennedy adds. He was determined to diminish the influence of a Vatican council that he insisted had been misinterpreted.

In contrast, Francis seems defined by the spirit of Vatican II. “That is why we feel we have known Francis a long time. And despite his catalog of virtues, Benedict fades into the past he loves a little more every day.”

Roncalli chose “the name John.” That broke a 175-year pattern of usual names: Pius, Leo, Gregory and Benedict. Bergoglio broke two even larger traditions. He is the first Jesuit to be elected pope. No one before felt brave enough to choose the name of the universally beloved 13th-century saint, St Francis of Assissi. By 1964, the council fathers adopted inter religious dialogue, especially with Muslims.

Nine days into his papacy, Pope Francis told the Vatican diplomatic corps that he hoped to intensify dialogue among the various religions, specially with Islam. That reminded Borelli of St. Francis of Assisi, crossing military lines to dialogue with Sultan Malik al-Kamil.

As cardinal in Buenos Aires, Bergolio co-authored Sobre el Cielo y la Tierra (On Heaven and Earth) with Abraham Skorka, a scientist and Jewish rabbi. “I think he’s going to change everything that he believes needs to be changed,” Slorka told the Tablet.

In his book with Skorka, Francis remembers being five or six and accompanying his grandmother. Two Salvation Army ladies passed by and he asked her if they were nuns. “No,” she replied, “They are Protestants, but they are good.” Bergoglio reflected back on the incident as archbishop and praised his grandmother’s “wisdom of true religion.”

“A theoretical poverty is no use to us,” Francis told a May 8 worldwide assembly of women religious. And just this Friday, he stressed in his morning homily: “Reaching out to our ’wounded brothers’ in works of mercy is touching the Crucified’s own wounds. There is no other way.”