Polish Pope, John Paul II has been canonized today [with John 23rd]

theblaze.com/stories/2014/04/27/four-popes-make-history-stunning-photos-from-canonization-ceremony-declaring-popes-john-paul-ii-and-john-xxiii-saints

He was a very noble man

The muted reaction on PF to JPII's canonization shouldn't be a disappointment. The more notorious high-volume, low-value posters on here have typically expressed an anti-Catholic stance so their comments most likely wouldn't be welcomed in this thread anyway.

Although he had his critics, for many Poles and non-Poles alike JPII was already regarded as saintly in many respects while he was alive. The global reaction to his death and unprecedented gathering for his funeral back in 2005 already afforded him this recognition. Sunday's canonization nearly a decade later was merely a formality.

And the canonization itself was also held concurrently with that for John XXIII. It was also presided over by two living popes. So the focus was not solely on this one great son of Poland. Since the Catholic Church literally is a universal church JPII is now a saint for practicing Catholics all around the world to draw inspiration from or to be the focus of their personal prayers.

JPII was undoubtedly a very charismatic guy. I stood on the stage as a singer at the Mass that JPII said in Ottawa, during his tour of Canada back in 1984. As we were singing the recessional piece at the end of the Mass, he removed the vestments, turned toward us with a big grin and while walking toward us, waved his arms like a conductor. Soon many of the 400,000 attendees were shouting, "Vive le pape!" See attached photo of the venue at Lebreton Flats, just west of downtown.

Found another photo of JPII visiting Wiślica in 1966, the village in which our dziadek was born in 1896.

Cześć.

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Thing that really impressed me was that he was brought up only by his father. His dad must have been a bit of a man too.

Thing that really impressed me was how he willingly and knowingly moved peadophile priests around Ireland and told his bishops not to alert the Irish police.

Dominic had a good post here, no reason what so ever as to why it should be taken down.
Over zealous modding yet again.

How dare anybody say anything bad connected with Poland!

With all due respect, I find it very hard to believe anyone would really do that. I suspect that there's some anti-Catholic or anti-pope propaganda out there, for whatever reason. And I say that as a non Catholic and pantheist. I reckon that some people or groups like to divide and rule, and so if they can divide the cohesion within a group, whether it's a religious group or just those who think Mr Bean is the greatest comedy show on Earth (as if, it's utter tripe) then they put stuff out there to make people leave the group in disgust. Whilst I'm no big fan of organised religion, I suspect a lot of it is utter b0llo)(.

Church was far different in Poland than Polish-Americans can comprehend. It was very rigid and in some ways forceful. Not only was your local attendance and financial support documented but actually voiced out loud as a form of pressure.

This is why many older Poles currently living outside of Poland have mixed feelings towards religion all together, such as my parents. But I try to illustrate to them that Catholicism is and should remain a vital part of Polish heritage. I think we all agree the Church currently has too much influence and political control. But I would never want it to start resembling Western Europe or USA. For the most part Polish general public is obedient and respectful. Very strong family structure. And I attribute that to the Roman Catholic upbringing.

If someone grows up with religion, they can always leave it behind or return. But someone that doesn't grow up with it somewhat in their life, is very unlikely to pick it up later in life or pass it down to their kids. Swift social changes can happen quickly, within a few generations. And it's very difficult to revert back, short of bloody clashes.

There's a multitude of proof


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_scandal_in_Ireland#Response_of_the_Church_to_the_scandals

Who do you think gave the go ahead for that?

Most damning of all: Poland's most famous son instructed his envoy in Ireland to tell his troops in Ireland to never report abuse to the authorities....which goes against a document written by the Irish church to make sure incidents of abuse were reported. He did nothing to help the disastrous abuse that was ongoing in Ireland, as we can see, he facilitated it.


And it wasn't only happening in Ireland:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parish_transfers_of_abusive_priests

The Pope knew about it and he allowed it, it has been proven that he knew about it and it was he who gave his bishops permission to move around pedophile priests so that there were not caught.

Here's a quote you'll enjoy:


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_scandal_in_Ireland#Response_of_the_bishops

I don't care for the cult of saints, indeed in Church teachings it's actually praising false gods, not that I'm religious. The Church can make whoever they want to be saints, however, people need to know that Karol Wojtyław as certainly no saint when he was head honcho of the Catholic Church.

I guarantee you this post will be binned, people don't like the truth.


That is true, people here are more like sheep. Why think when others will do your thinking for you?

I'm not sure I believe it, although I would share your anger if it were so. I think it is very unlikely, common sense says that a world full of Catholic folk would not adore JP if there was any real substance to such accusations. It smacks of some quarters trying to divide and rule, because JP was a great inspiration to Poles in fighting the dark days of Communism and the grey suits don't like unified people because unity equals strength. As soon as non-believers become the majority, they'll probably stage a spiritual hoax of some kind to split that group up too. :) I don't know who the grey suits are btw, it's just a figure of speech that could stretch to various VIs.


Strangely enough, exactly what I had been thinking last weekend. Great minds perhaps!

Sorry man, it's there in black and white, read the reports. You're replied too quickly for you to have read the links or reports..some of which run to a few hundred pages.

The abuse in the Catholic Church went all the way to the top.

Catholic folk here adore JP because they believe what they are spoon fed. Did you see TV over the weekend? It was a propaganda parade. Not one single voice of disagreement. Why? Because people here are scared sh!tless to rock the boat. Lots of people know about the awful things that took place in the Church while it was under his control, but they fear speaking out about it because the powerful Catholic lobby and right wing here would crucify them and led a smear campaign against them.

I can tell you one thing for sure, he is certainly not adored in Catholic Ireland for his hand in the systematic abuse that took place and his willingness to do nothing about it......other than give permission to hide accused priests.

That's because I know Catholic folk I speak with don't accept the reports as true if they implicate JP, they call it evil lies. I tend to think it is likely to be untrue or a massive exaggeration. If it were true, it would make a mockery out of everything, and I can't believe billions of Catholics around the world are gullible. I'm not posting this to be a disagreeable knob, it's my honest opinion. If my opinion is wrong then it's wrong, but it's my honest feeling on the matter.

Oh those pesky foreigners *gets pitchfork


As I said above, people here are afraid to rock the boat. The media here are cowed cowards.


Come and say that to my face, hard man on the Internet aren't you?
You may be happy to be spoon fed, I'm glad your aims in life are so low that you accept lies. You probably loved life in PRL Poland.


Ah, OK, I see. When a powerful organisation carries out acts that are illegal and immoral we should just leave them alone because the status quo is always better for the sheeple.

Ah OK, fine, I see.

By that logic, Communism would still be running Poland into the ground.


I am dealing with it, not my problem that you cannot and don't want to accept the truth.
Lose the attitude and maybe try and educate yourself.

smurf, thanks for sharing these facts... btw my critical (not abusive) post was also removed.

They do indeed. Here in Poland people are rather over-protective of children. The idea that somebody who covered up for (and thus enabled) paedophiles should be a saint is one that a lot of Poles simply disagree with. Canonising JPII is going to do a fair bit of damage, just as the RCC's sickening defence of Sister Bernadette has done and will do.


Don't be silly: he wasn't alive then (and has never lived a day of his life in Poland).

I'm sure I've had that said to me by you and other expats at this forum before. So is this the clincher, or will you say the same about another comment I make in a few days?


Are you seriously doing that old 'tough guy on the internet' argument with me. I'm not even going to go there. Believe if you have told me what you typed, I would have said it to your face. Then what would you do?

Funny that those who call others out on trying to be internet tough guys, are often the most cowardly in real life and never speak out. Only on the internet.


I don't have an attitude and am educated, thanks.


There we go again. Another statement made without knowing any facts. So how do you know I have never spend a day in Poland?

People keep arguing that John Paul II covered stuff up. How do you know this? You don't. I [or other Catholics] have never claimed that the Catholic Church does not have bad apples [like most organizations]. Do you think if they found out that some priest had done these terrible things to children, the first thing they would do is make sure they go and alert the Pope? Has it occurred to any of you that he might not have known? You do know that much later he apologized for the sins committed by the Catholic Church, so perhaps he found out later. It could have been hidden, not only from the media, but from the Pope. There is no evidence that he purposely hid anything, it's nothing but false claims by anti Catholic left wingers 'well this and that was being covered up by the Catholic Church, so since John Paul II was Pope, he must have known about it and instigated the cover up.

For a start there is the letter that smurf has already mentioned written by late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's envoy to Ireland. You really think that that letter was sent without being cleared with the big man?


So at the very best he is incompetent on a truly epic scale.


You have never lived in Poland. We all know that.


I just hope that smurf needs somebody to hold his coat after you say it.

Yet you continue..... :)
And I'm still not an expat, never have been.


blah blah, what a great comeback.


We'll have to differ on that opinion.


Yea, you might want to read the links to the various reports that I linked to and then read those reports............however, you won't do this because some of them run to 100s of pages and you're not really that bothered, you've just arguing because someone who isn't Polish would have the gall to call into question some dude who just happened to be born here.


No, but the Irish bishops did (this is shown in the various reports) ask for guidance on the issue. Old Karl gave them permission to move the priests to different parishes and he also told them not to ever alert authorities about allegations of pedophilia. It's documented in the reports.


Publicly he did, but privately he was telling bishops not to report crimes and to move priests. Again, it's in the reports.


So much lol.
Fine, go ahead and believe what you've been told. Although that would mean that you also believe in dragons, the earth is roughly 4000 years old and cynocephaly

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynocephaly#Medieval_East

Just for the record, I've never once voted left wing, nor have I anything in particular against the Catholic Church, I treat all Churches the same :)


I couldn't possibly comment ;)

I'm impressed, you really took pettiness and prejudice to a new level. You want to think the worst about JPII be my guest, you can voice if you must but going about your obsession as if that story has any substance worth taking about is just about as much mental as it gets.

admittedly, if anything due to his charisma, even coming from a non-believer, it's hard to not like JP2 on the surface, but at the end of the day, because I'm not a religious person (at all) I look at everyone on an even playing field. the facts are laid out for us all, there was plenty of child abuse running rampant through catholic churches throughout the world, child abuse JP2 knew about and did nothing about, and that CANNOT be overlooked, I don't care how much Jesus you got in your life.

If you're someone that doesn't believe in a religion, or a "God" for that matter, you tend to look at everyone, even the pope, in the same way as anyone else. because of that, I'd like to present a comparison:

imagine a large world wide corporation, say 10,000 employees, and because of the size of the company, they offer day care for employees, right on site. this isn't a new idea, I know of several large companies that offer just this. they grow large enough and the facility is big enough to hire on site child care employees and the parents have their children right on site at the company campus. now imagine that at these child day cares, some of the children are being sexually abused, and it's more prevalent in certain locations compared to others. while all this is going on, the CEO of the company is FULLY aware of all that is going on, and instead of calling the police, having them fired, and giving the parents of these children the opportunity to prosecute these unspeakable crimes against their children, they have these child abusers transferred to different branches or have them work in different capacities, but nonetheless, they still work for the company.

sound crazy? it should. but it's exactly what The Vatican has been doing for as long as any of us can remember, yet people swarm the churches, week after week, and umpteem million poles flooded The Vatican to see a man get "sainted" that was fully aware of children getting treated in unthinkable and unmentionable ways. imagine a man being called a saint that did little to nothing to members of his organization that were molesting children.

if you're OK with that, well.....I guess the right thing to say would be "join the club", because the rest of the world seemingly is as well.

Well said Fuzzy

Great fiction, are you doing that for living? I just don't know what your fiction has to do with JPII or the Chruch.

You must have missed this bit.....


I've made some changes to help you understand.
Have a nice public holiday :)

people either accept that it happened (and continues to happen) or they deny it. we all know what side you're on. it's cool. i'm not singling you out, you're simply part of the millions of others that think and act the same way.

I once watched an HBO documentary about the children in Ireland years ago that were abused by the hundreds by priests. They interviewed them in the documentary, they're full grown now, and their lives are completely ruined because of sexual abuse from catholic priests. It made my stomach hurt just watching it, thinking about how sick someone must be to do such things to innocent children.

Oh, just a quick cut and paste from wikipedia:
Roman Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal in Ireland

The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland is a major chapter in the worldwide Catholic sexual abuse scandal. Unlike the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States, the scandal in Ireland included cases of high-profile Catholic clerics involved in illicit heterosexual relations as well as widespread physical abuse of children in the Catholic-run childcare network. Starting in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children in previous decades. In many cases, the abusing priests were moved to other parishes to avoid embarrassment or a scandal, assisted by senior clergy. By 2010 a number of in-depth judicial reports had been published, but with relatively few prosecutions.

In March 2010, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter of apology to address all of the abuse that was carried out by Catholic clergy.[1]

Hey, thanks for the apology, Benedict.

You have no idea about inner workings of the Church. You don't know in what way they are dealing with issues and how. You are guessing. It means you are not talking about facts but your guesses.

You are dealing in fiction and assumptions not facts.
Are you a member of the Catholic Church? If not mind your own bussines.

at the risk of sounding completely condescending, i feel terribly sorry for you. we (and when I say "we", I mean everyone sound in mind) are not going to question whether or not these things happened, because they did. we are not going to question whether or not the guilty ones went to prison, because they didn't. we are not going to question fact, fact that YOUR pope has fully and publicly recognized (and apologized for) because that would be psychotic.

if we can't recognize fact, what can we possibly base our discussion on. with that said, I cannot further this conversation if that's going to be the format. disregard for things we know to be true. the true definition of "denial". far beyond naivety.

i will also go on to say that you should be ashamed of yourself for your failure to recognize such awful things those despicable people did.

Your comparison is a work of fiction intent on making John Paul II bad. It has no merit.


As I said mind your own business.


Given this opportunity I say that you should take interest in gruops where such things are happening on a daily basis like teachers, gays, politicians, military and such. Don't bother your head with an organisation you have no connection to.

He knew about the paedophiles in the ranks of the RCC, so he bears some responsibility, don't you think?

Give it over already. It has nothing to do with you.

John Paul II.. by far the best Pope I have ever seen :)
I have seen on couple of occassions andtruly I can say that He was one of the Greatest.
He fought for the rights of the poorest, believed in recounciliation, fought for life and against the Sin.
May He rest in Peace!
Happy 94th Birthday Papa!