Pope Francis has signed a canonization decree for popes John Paul II and John XXIII, the Vatican announced on Friday. The news of John XXIII's sainthood came as a surprise even to those inside the Vatican, as the late pope had not had two miracles ascribed to him, as is typically necessary for a pope to become a saint. In approving the sainthood of John Paul II, the Polish pontiff who led the Catholic church from 1978 to 2005, Pope Francis also credited him with a second miracle, which he said a Vatican committee had accepted as valid.
The second miracle as cited by Pope Francis concerns a Costa Rican woman named Floribeth Mora, now 50, who said her cerebral aneurysm was inexplicably cured on May 1, 2011, the day John Paul II was beatified. Mora reportedly woke up on April 8 of that year with debilitating head pains and went to the hospital.
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"They couldn't have done anything for me," Mora told Noticieros Televisa, "because they were going to close the artery with an aluminum clip...to stop the aneurysm. Nothing could be done because it was in an inaccessible part of my brain."
Mora's condition by then was so bad that she was sent home by doctors, who gave her no more than a month to live. One morning, she said, she awoke and looked at a magazine next to her bed. On the cover was John Paul II, gesturing with his hand for her to get up. She rose, walked into the kitchen and greeted her husband. "He said to me, 'what are you doing up?' I said, 'I feel better. I didn't tell him anything, I was afraid to tell him what was happening right then because I thought he was going to think I was crazy."
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The first of John Paul's supposed miracles came in what a Vatican committee said was his intersession to cure a French nun, Marie Simon-Pierre Normand, of Parkinson's disease -- an illness which John Paul suffered as well. Calls for the pontiff's sanctification began at his 2005 funeral, when cries of "Santo subito!" ("sainthood now!") broke out among the faithful. Then-pope Benedict XVI dispensed with the traditional five-year waiting period of beatification, starting it only weeks after John Paul's death.
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Radio Vaticana reported that Father Federico Lombardi, current director of the Holy See office, said the canonization of John XXIII -- nicknamed "the Good Pope" in part for his efforts during the Holocaust to help hundreds of refugees -- without a second miracle was still valid given the existence of the first miracle which led to his beatification. He also pointed out that theologians are engaged in an ongoing debate about whether or not two distinct miracles are necessary and added that the Pope "certainly" had the power to dispense with the need for the second miracle. Lombardi thinks it "likely" that John Paul and John XXIII would be officially canonized before the end of the year, though no dates have yet been confirmed.
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