Pope Francis yesterday beatified Pope Paul VI, concluding a remarkable meeting of bishops that discussed family issues and drew parallels to the tumultuous reforms of the Second Vatican Council that Paul oversaw and implemented.
Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI was on hand for the Mass, which took place hours after Catholic bishops approved a document charting a more pastoral approach to ministering to Catholic families after failing to reach a consensus on the two most divisive issues at the synod: a more welcome stance toward gays, and allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said participants had approved a “rebalanced” final report that took into account the concerns of the most conservative members.
Photo: Reuters
In a final vote after two weeks of fierce debate, three paragraphs touching on the hot-button issues did not get the two-thirds majority needed from the 183 bishops.
Nevertheless, Francis, 77, told the synod he was confident that the coming year would allow for ideas to mature and “find concrete solutions” to the many challenges facing the Catholic Church.
The full document, including the contentious paragraphs, was published at the pope’s request.
Photo: EPA
The spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics had earlier called for the church to take a more merciful approach to unmarried mothers, remarried divorcees and gays, famously saying of homosexuals: “Who am I to judge?”
A preliminary report last Monday had made waves around the world by suggesting the church should reach out to homosexuals, who have “gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community,” outraging traditionalists who had to be reminded by the Vatican that it was a work in progress.
In the media glare, the synod took on the proportions of a referendum on the pope’s audacious line and observers said the early reports may have backfired on progressives.
Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn told reporters the adopted text was “much more reserved” than the draft document, reflecting opposition from bishops from “very different cultural situations.”
Yet while the synod scrapped its groundbreaking welcome and showed deep divides on the issues, the questions just being on the table is significant given that they had been taboo until Francis’ papacy.
“God is not afraid of new things,” Francis said in his homily yesterday. “That is why he is continually surprising us, opening our hearts and guiding us in unexpected ways.”
He quoted Paul as saying that the church, particularly its synod of bishops, must survey the signs of the times to make sure the church adapts methods to respond to the “growing needs of our time and the changing conditions of society.”
Paul was elected in 1963 to succeed the popular Pope John XXIII, and during his 15-year reign was responsible for implementing the Vatican II reforms and steering the church through the tumultuous years of the 1960s sexual revolution.
Vatican II opened the way for Mass to be said in local languages instead of in Latin, called for greater involvement of the laity in the life of the church and revolutionized the church’s relations with people of other faiths.
Yet Paul is perhaps best known for the divisive 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which enshrined the church’s opposition to artificial contraception.
Paul was beatified — the first step toward possible sainthood — after the Vatican certified a miracle attributed to his intercession concerning a US boy whom doctors had said would be born with serious birth defects. The boy, whose identity has been kept secret at his parents’ request, is now a healthy teenager. A second miracle needs to be certified by the Vatican for him to be canonized.
The beatification marks the third 20th-century pope Francis has elevated this year, after canonizing Saints John Paul II and John XXIII.
The Vatican said 70,000 people attended the Mass, held under sunny Roman skies, far fewer than the 800,000 who attended the dual canonization earlier this year.
Paul is often called the “forgotten” or “misunderstood” pope, caught between the “good pope” John XXIII and the crowd-pleasing, globe-trotting John Paul.
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