You may very probably think the less well of me for this ... but after the new Sunday politics show on the Beeb, I clicked across to the competing show from S Peter's Square (Vatican TV).
Practically nobody there for the beatification of Pope John Paul I!!!
But PF was there, looking very grim. At one point, I wondered if he was on pain-killers; no, I am not joking; my own hospitalisations make me sympathetic towards anybody who has to suffer. I put up a prayer to OL of Walsingham for PF and whatever sufferings he may be going through.
But his adress was unfathomable. His face was ... as it commonly is ... grim ... even grumpy. And lumpy. Yet he expressed his dislike of people who don't 'do' Cheerful. 'Arcigno' was the word he used to describe them.
Even more remarkable: in what looked like a highly critical allusion to Cardinal Cupich, who once locked a church up during the Triduum, PF heaped praise upon "Una chiesa che non chiude mai le porte". Or was he implicitly criticising hierarchies which kept churches shut during the pandemic? Or where churches are being kept locked up even now rather than being open for the celebration of the Authentic Use of the Roman Rite?
Weird times. Let's hope that PF's brilliant, radiant, and inimitable smile soon returns.
7 comments:
Perhaps you should have directed your prayers to Saint Fiacre, invoked against piles. PF looks like he could use the saint's help.
John Paul I achieved nothing in his short pontificate, unless you count assuming a double-barrelled name and not bothering to get crowned.
The Mass was in Italian, so one assumes that his is a purely local cult.
Presumably this is being seen as a template for another pontiff who regards himself as genial!
You know well, dear Father, that to liberals/leftists of all stripes words, as with Humpty Dumpty, mean whatever they want them to mean---with no reference to context, logic, etymological history, accepted usage, rationality, or even common decency. Whatever serves ideology is A-OK! And if you are not comfortable in Never, Never Land, why, then you must be rigid. Hence the string of insults and calumny to follow---in the hallowed tradition of mercy, of course. Give me a Borgia pope with concubines and bastard children over this corrupt tyranny any time. At least previous corrupt popes had the basic decency of respecting their oath to the Faith and their flock, even if their personal lives left much to be desired.
Oh Father, to my great shame, i did not even know that Pope John Paul I was venerabilis, let alone beatus and now sanctus! I stopped following Vatican doings about nine years ago ... I suspect that my brother priests here also know nothing of this very remarkable canonisation: yesterday four of us spent the evening together after a long day of masses, vespers and "family day", and not a word was said about JPI, or the Vatican. John Paul I seemed quite an amiable fellow, and might well have made a good pope, but we shall never know. It seems to me that the only reason for his canonisation was to fill up the gap in the line of Vativan II popes: it is really the canoniisation of the 2nd Vatican Council after all. Paul VI had no cultus, was a failure as pope,but had to be canonised because of his role in setting forth the Council and substituting the Roman Rite with th NO, amongst other things. Yes, give me a good old Borgia pope any day: ive said it myself a thousand times before: better an honest and pious sinner on the throne of Saint Peter than an uncatholic, autocratic ideologue.
one assumes that his is a purely local cult
Very local - limited to certain members of the Curia
He was the last pope to use the sedia gestastoria though. That must count for something?
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