(1) Now that the miracle attributed to Mother Teresa has been authenticated, the Pope will beatify the Nobel Peace Prize winner.(2) In 1985, after his cardinal petitioned the Vatican to beatify 117 Vietnamese martyrs, he was told he could never be released.(3) The Pope is due to beatify two dead shepherd children who were lucky enough to see the Virgin Mary six times in five months way back in 1917 when they were just 11 and 12 years old.(4) Who better demonstrates this reality than John Paul II, the pope about to beatify Pius?(5) Overriding the usual five-year waiting period, Pope Benedict XVI has begun the process of beatifying his predecessor.(6) Mother Teresa is on her way to sainthood, having been beatified by the Pope in a two-hour ceremony in Rome.(7) Junipero Serra was beatified for sainthood by Pope John Paul II in 1984, at his grave in the sanctuary of Mission San Carlos Borromeo in Carmel, California.(8) He was beatified by the Church of Rome in 1886, and canonized in 1935.(9) There is now a shelf of books assessing Pius's career, the most contentious of which, John Cornwell's 1999 study Hitler's Pope, may well have set back the Vatican's schedule for beatifying the pontiff.(10) Mother Mary of the Passion, who was beatified on October 20, followed St. Francis of Assissi's evangelical spirit of simplicity, poverty and chastity.(11) The frail nun, who died in 1997 after spending more than six decades caring for the destitute and homeless, was beatified yesterday by Pope John Paul II at a two-hour long ceremony in Rome.(12) The easy symmetry of beatifying these two popes on the same day may appeal to a mentality habitually working to tidy up and correct history, but there are limits to what the Vatican can do with this kind of manipulation.(13) Indeed, the formal Catholic procedures for beatifying and canonizing saints are intended, inter alia, to guard against superstition, miracle - mongering, and popular enthusiasms of a possibly heretical nature.(14) One such woman was Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who will be beatified today in Rome.(15) Pier Giorgio Frassati was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1990.(16) Pope John Paul II has controversially beatified both a German mystic whose gory visions of Christ's suffering helped inspire Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ, and an Austrian emperor whose troops used poison gas.
