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June 27, 2001
Pontiff, in beatifying 5 people, calls eucharistic devotion key to holiness
From Louisville, KY THE RECORD 5/3/01
Catholic News Service
Calling eucharistic devotion a secret to holiness, Pope John Paul II beatified five men and women, including Puerto Rico's first layman and a Canadian woman who founded a religious order.
As 3,000 Puerto Ricans cheered and waved their island's flag in St. Peter's Square April 29, the pope said the newly Blessed Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, a lay activist who died in 1963, demonstrates that all Christians are called to pursue sanctity "in a conscious and responsible way."
He said Blessed Mother Marie-Anne Blondin, a Canadian who founded the Sisters of St. Anne in 1850 to educate poor children despite resistance from some church leaders, "is a model of an exisence surrendered to love and marked by the paschal mystery."
The pontiff said the group beatified served as "proof" that God works through those who trus in him. He prayed that they "help us, in turn, to pursue the path of sanctity, especially when it becomes difficult.
Blessed Carlos, who died at age 44, reinvigorated campus ministry for Catholic students at the state-run University of Puerto Rico and championed lay people's participation in the church's liturgical life in the years prior to the Second Vatican Council.
Unable to pursue university studies because of an illness that led to colon cancer, "Charlie," as he is popularly known, became a self-taught Catholic intellectual who worked to communicate the vitality and relevance of the Catholic faith to students and professors.
Puerto Rican pilgrims at the Vatican ceremony included a number of Blessed Carlos' former students, thrilled to see a local layman recognized by the universal church.
'He was a very simple man, at the same time very religious and very humanistic," said Alicia Lopez de Flores, who said Blessed Carlos taught her high school catechism in the early 1950s.
At the core of Blessed Carlos' spirituality, the pope said, was his faith in the resurrection. He promoted the Easter Vigil as the defining moment of Christian spiritual life, repeating often, We live for that night."
The pope said trust in the Resurrection also sustained Blessed Mother Marie-Anne in her struggles to found an order dedicated to educating poor boys and girls in rural 19th-century Quebec. She won permission from her bishop in 1850 to open coeducational schools, despite church rules that prohibited women from teaching boys.
The pope also beatified:
Bishop Manuel Gonzalez Garcia, 1877-1940, of Malaga and Palencia in southern Spain. Known as the "bishop of the abandoned tabernacle," he made a priority the fostering of devotion to the Eucharist, an example "that continues to speak to the church today," the pope said.
Sister Caterina Volpicelli, 1839-1894, founder of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart. Her "surprising- apostolic generosity," including the promotion of the laity, was nourished by a "profound eucharistic spirituality," the pope said.
Sister Caterina Cittadini, 1801-1857, founder of the Ursuline Sisters of St. Jerome of Somasca. "Also for her, the secret was union with the Eucharist," said the pope. That path is equally valid today for those 'who want to transmit the values of Christian culture to the new generations, in this epoch of great social changes," he said.
John XXIII's body to be displayed, reburied
Catholic News Service
Before burial in a new tomb in St. Peter's Basilica, the body of Pope John XXIII will be displayed for one day, the Vatican said.
The popular pontiffs body, in a new bronze-and-glass casket, .will be in St. Peter's Square for a morning Mass June 3, the feast of Pentecost and the 38th anniversary of Pope John's death.
After the Mass by Pope John Paul II, Pope John's remains will be moved to the basilica's main altar for "veneration by the faithful throughout the afternoon, a Vatican (sic) said.
Late last year, the Vatican approved plans to move his tomb from the basilica's subterranean level, where it had attracted hundreds of visitors daily.
At the pontiffs exhumation in mid-January, Vatican officials found his face and body largely preserved. Though the discovery provoked considerable surprise in Rome, the Vatican downplayed talk of a miracle, saying it probably owed to preservation techniques and the lack of oxygen.