As many as 3 million visitors have traveled to Rome to be there Sunday as Pope Francis declares two new saints.
Both saints are popes. Both are sons of the Second Vatican Council. And after Sunday’s canonizations, each will be known by a new name: Pope St. John XXIII and Pope St. John Paul II.
What is a saint? In the Catholic tradition, a saint is simply someone who’s made it to heaven. Saints aren’t perfect. They are men, women and (sometimes) children whose lives, the church says, give us examples of holiness and heroic virtue — sometimes to the point of martyrdom.
There are saints for everyone. St. Joseph, Mary’s husband, is the patron saint of fathers. St. Barbara is the patron saint of artillerymen. St. Thomas More, whose head was chopped off by King Henry VIII, is the saint of politicians. There is even a patron saint for those especially holy people known as newspapermen: St. Francis de Sales.
These two newest saints have special resonance for New York. For one thing, both men advanced Christian-Jewish reconciliation. Before he became Pope John XXIII, Angelo Roncalli helped save Jews fleeing the Holocaust. When he became pope, he greeted a delegation of American Jews by saying “I am Joseph, your brother” — evoking the biblical Joseph’s meeting with his brothers in Egypt. Pope John Paul II likewise called the Jews “our elder brothers” and made history when he visited Rome’s Great Temple — the first pope to visit a synagogue.
The two men are also saints for modern times. In convoking Vatican II, Pope John XXIII intended to renew the church so the Gospel might be heard in a modern world. Pope John Paul II continued in that spirit, and in the process helped bring down Soviet Communism.
Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II were different men at different times with different styles. But what animated them is the belief they held in common: that the child born in a Bethlehem stable and crucified outside Jerusalem redeemed mankind — and gave us a model for living lives that are fully human.
History reminds us that popes have not always been saintly. Until relatively recently, popes hadn’t even strayed far from the Vatican. Both of these two shepherds changed dramatically. And in so doing, they remind the faithful around the world the real message of Sunday’s cannonizations: We are all called to be saints.