On Sunday April 27th 2014, Pope John Paul II will be a Saint. Father Gianfranco Grieco comments on the Pope of the Family and of Life
The news people were waiting for in recent months immediately spread throughout the world. At the Consistory on Monday, September 30th, Pope Francis declared that the Blessed John XXIII and John Paul II will be inscribed among the saints, on Sunday, April 27, 2014 , the Second Sunday after Easter, which is dedicated to Divine Mercy. Just eight years after his death (on April 2nd, 2005) and three after his beatification (on May 1st, 2011), Pope John Paul II returns to take his place in the heart of the Church’s sanctity. Our joy is great and our gratitude immense. The Pope who guided the Peter’s boat for 27 years (1978-2005) rises from the earth to heaven, and indicates to the men and women of good will the path of the holiness of life, torment and passion of the activities of the father and pastor of the Universal Church.
«After my death I would like to be remembered as the Pope of the family and of life», he confided to a close collaborator, who had brought him some texts to be reviewed, precisely on the issues that for years have been shaking the present and the future of the world. The family and life are issues that captivated this Pope’s heart that was strong and gentle as well as his soul that was as tender as that of a child. The young Karol had a family marked by pain. First, the death of his mother Emilia (1929) at age 45; then, that of his brother, Edmund (1932), a sportsman who loved football; and finally that of his father, Karol (1941): throughout his life, he was to carry in his heart and soul, the sign of a tearful family. For this reason, starting from the vacuum of human affection that is born and raised within the family hearth, he increasingly felt the urgent need to broaden his heart to that great family of nations gathered in the Church and in the global community.
John Paul II looked to the family with special fondness. In his international and national travels, at the Audiences, during visits to the parishes, in group sessions, he untiringly turned his eyes to the family of nations and the community family. He had words of love and understanding, tenderness and hope for the family. At times, his words to the family were harsh and strong, for example when he reaffirmed that the values of life from the moment of conception until natural death, the joy of faith and the gift of self, are “non-negotiable values”. He asked of his faithful heroism without delegation and without return.
On May 13th, 1981—the day of the attack in St. Peter‘s Square—the Pontifical Council for the Family was created with the Motu Proprio Familia a Deo instituta. That document indicates the tasks of the Christian family in the modern world according to the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, signed on November 22nd, 1981. The pope “who came from far away” spoke once again about the dignity and the vocation of women in the Apostolic Letter Mulieris dignitatem, dated August 15th, 1988. And then, in the Year of the Family—1994—with the first World Meeting of Families (6-9 October 1994), he opened the series of worldwide encounters: from Rio to Manila, from Rome to Valencia, from Mexico City to Milan, and finally Philadelphia in 2015, these are the many moments of a single and long journey of love for the family and for life on the different continents, damaged by the “victories” of bankruptcy and unfair laws, contrary to God‘s creative project.
His pastoral for the family and life had their great and constant points of reference in documents that have marked the history of our restless and violent days: the Charter of the Rights of the Family (1983), the Instruction Donum vitae (1987), and the Letter to the Families of the world (1994), the Christmas Letter to all children (1994), the Letter to women around the world (1995), and the Letter to the Elderly (1999). He always carried everything and everyone in his heart. The Family “sanctuary of life,” the “Gospel of the family and Life,” “responsible procreation,” and life as a “gift of God” are the words and expressions he loved most. These words and expressions are now those that a saint of the Church of our day continues to recommend to the men and women who for over 27 years walked with him on the streets of the world. Fr. Gianfranco Grieco