This story appears in the Papal canonizations feature series. View the full series.
April 24, 2014
Frequent NCR contributor Jason Berry has written a piece for Global Post examining the routes to canonization taken by Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. Read it here: A tale of two soon-to-be saints, John XXIII and John Paul II.
“[Pope] Francis’s decision to canonize the two popes on Divine Mercy Sunday [April 27] is a gesture of unity for a church battered by scandals in the public square by appealing to camps on the left and right who revere the two popes in different ways,” Berry writes.
The two men “represent two very different halves of the Catholic Church,” Berry says.