Word: pius
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...crypt and were led to a white stone tomb. A casket was opened for them. At this point, wrote Monsignor Carlo Liberati of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, "there was a moment of profound and intense commotion." The body within, that of 19th century Pope Pius IX, was "almost perfectly conserved." Pius, known universally in Rome as Pio Nono, died in 1878. Yet here he was "in the beauty of his humanity, just as he is seen in the photographic documentation" of his deathbed, back when the entire city came "and admired the beautiful face...
...minority. The April exhumation cleared the way for Pio Nono's beatification, scheduled for this Sunday. Beatification will confirm Pius' "heroic virtue," affirm a miracle (a nun's broken kneecap healed) and encourage Catholics to venerate his remains, which will be transferred to a clear crystal casket. The next step will be canonization, or sainthood...
Although the Vatican will not admit it, Pio Nono is a last-minute substitution for a controversial successor, Pius XII. The beatification of the later Pius was to have balanced that of Pope John XXIII, the liberal hero who called the Second Vatican Council. The past 40 years, however, have seen an unabating storm of complaint that Pius XII did not do enough to oppose the Holocaust. Postponing Pius XII's "cause" and replacing it with that of Pio Nono--also a conservative favorite--must have seemed a good idea at the time...
...While John Paul II may struggle to defend Pius IX on his treatment of the Jews, the 19th-century pontiff's beatification is being championed by the conservative bishops John Paul appointed to the Curia. Beatification, an advanced step along the way to canonization (sainthood), is one of a number of battlegrounds in the church's centuries-old conflict between theological liberals and conservatives, in which neither side can afford to drive their opponents entirely from the fold - a church that suffered life-threatening breakaways first by the Eastern Orthodox and then by the Protestants can afford no further splits...
That much is reflected in the fact that Pius IX's beatification process, first mooted in 1907, is now proceeding in parallel time with the beatification of Pope John XXIII, one of the most liberal pontiffs in the church's history, who presided over the Second Vatican Council beginning in 1962 and inaugurated a modern, more liberal church. John XXIII, needless to say, is not a favorite of theological conservatives, who've spent much of John Paul II's papacy trying to undo his legacy. The liberal pope was to have been beatified in parallel with Pius XII, but with...