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Forgive my excitement if posted in wrong section...

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/n...able_moves_one_step_closer_to_sainthood/

Magnificent. Pope John Paul was instrumental in drawing me into the Catholic Church. What's more, I believe that it was his intercession that saw me through some of the most difficult days of my life.

Thanks be to God for this declaration.

Not to detract from the subject of James' thread, but Pope Pius XII was also proclaimed Venerable in this same declaration (likely to raise some controversy), and Father Jerzy Popieluszko, of blessed memory, 'the Solidarity priest' so called, was acknowledged a martyr in odium fidei, a prelude to beatification.

The Holy Father also recognized a miracle attributed to Brother Andre (Bessette), whose tomb at St Joseph's Oratory in Montreal is a site of frequent pilgrimages and one at which I had the honor to pray as a very young teenager - many, many years ago. It was a place which I remember as exuding an extraordinary sense of holiness.

A full list of the decrees acknowledged by HH can be seen here [hagiographycircle.com]

Many years,

Neil

Pius XII?

Pius XII was a reformer...

• Adding psychological evaluation to priestly formation in the West
• Declaring the Assumption of Mary ex cathedra as dogmatic
• Permitted and encouraged biblical exigesis other than to clarify the Vulgate's blurry bits
• Rehabilitated the authority of the Eastern Churches in Union
• began delatinization (which really comes to fruition under the popes John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II).
• Made many efforts to help Jews during the Holocaust
• Said it's OK to believe in evolution, just so long as one doesn't believe the soul evolved (Humani Generis)
• Began separate codifications canon law for the East and West in the union of Catholic churches.

Literally one of the most influential popes... and one that is sadly not well enough known about.

I've always been very uncomfortable with the forensic element of the Catholic canonization process. It's also alien to the organic process by which the cult of the saints has developed in the Christian East.

And so we have Saint Constantine (Equal to the Apostles, no less) the Great - model for the faint of heart.

As in the Emperor Constantine? He hadn't been a saint yet in the Catholic Church?