Pope John Paul II Attributed Miracle

Roman Catholic Pope, Benedict XVI has sanctioned a miracle attributed to Pope John Paul II's intercession of a French nun suffering from Parkinson's disease. Pope Benedict XVI announced in a decree Friday, Jan. 14, 2011, that the cure from Parkinson's syndrome was miraculous, making this the the last step needed for the beatification of Pope John Paul II. A second miracle is needed for him to be canonized a saint.

Pope Benedict XVI set May 1,2011, in the quickest process on record, as the date for John Paul's beatification. No pope has ever before beatified his immediate successor. Benedict placed John Paul on the express track to potential sainthood after he died, dispensing with the regular five-year waiting time period prior to the process beginning. He insisted that the probe into John Paul's life history constitute complete and exhaustive efforts to stave off any questions about his moral excellence.

A central step toward Catholicism's loftiest honor, and a needed boost for a church morale suffering from the clerical sex abuse outrage, it is not without contention. While John Paul himself was never incriminated of indecencies, he has been accused of reacting slowly as the sex abuse outrage flared up in the United States in 2002. Many of the cases that came out to date concerned crimes and cover-ups during his 26-year reign as Pope.

Critics have blamed John Paul's concern with saving the rights of accused priests, frequently at the expense of the victims. His experiences in Poland were of priests often being accused of false crimes thus his reluctance.The most detrimental instance tied to John Paul related to allegations against the Rev. Marciel Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ. Allegements were that Maciel had raped young seminarians. These allegements were brought to the Vatican in the 1990s but orders from John Paul's No. 2 resulted in a sanctioned trial being tabled. Maciel was eventually sanctioned in 2006 but it was not till after Benedict became pope. Two years later Maciel died. Vatican officials hold there was nothing to put beatification into doubt.

The last remaining question concerned Benedict's approving that the cure of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, was indeed a miracle attributable to the intercession of the late pope John Paul. Questions about the correctness of the nun's original diagnosis did surface. Vatican-appointed doctors had analyzed the case and ascertained there was no scientific explanation for her cure.

The beatification date of May 1, which is the first Sunday after Easter, is important. It's the Feast of Divine Mercy, which John Paul himself inaugurated in 2000 after canonizing Sister Faustina Kowalska.

While the counts may not pass the 3 million who congregated here forJohn Paul's funeral, Poland's religious tour operators were already gearing up to transport in faithful followers so they may celebrate someone who many regarded a saint while he was alive.The ceremony is predicted to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to Rome for this precedent-setting Mass of May 1, 2011.