Unsteady Halo: The Canonization of Pope John Paul II

Photo ~ Pope John Paul II gives his blessing to father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ order, in this file photo. John Paul and his top advisers, like a succession of papacies beforehand, turned a blind eye to evidence that Maciel was a con artist, drug addict, pedophile and religious fraud. Sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church mar John Paul's reputation.
Photograph by: Plinio Lepri, The Associated Press , The Associated Press

Santo subito! -- "Sainthood now!" That was the urgent plea of the crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square in April, 2005, as Pope John Paul II lay dying. If the crowd had had its way, he would have been proclaimed a saint the very moment he died. And in truth, the canonization process has been extremely brisk. John Paul II has been dead only nine years and the Church stands ready to canonize him on April 27.

The passage of years, however, has allowed for a more sober assessment of his pontificate.

Still, the perspective of time allows us to realize that his pontificate had the effect not of strengthening but rather of weakening the Church in a number of crucial respects. And we would be a friend to history -- and to the Church -- if we acknowledged these flaws, for they are not insignificant.

First, there was the priestly pedophilia crisis.

And the crisis worsened as he aged. Pontificating excuse-makers duly explained that he lacked the capacity to grasp its scale. In the Poland of his youth, his apologists recited, many priests faced trumped-up charges of child abuse and now the aged Pope could not accept that these charges were genuine. Both for the clericalism he promoted and the cognitive dissonance he could not overcome, John Paul II bears at least some of the responsibility for the crisis.

And among the worst cases of child abuse was that of Fr. Marcial Maciel. The Founder of the religious order, The Legion of Christ, Fr. Maciel enjoyed extraordinary favor all the while he preyed on his seminarians, victimizing dozens over his long reign of terror. He fathered children with various women on at least two continents, and even plagiarized his spiritual autobiography. A group of former seminarians attempted to inform the Vatican of their mistreatment in the 1990s, but were never given a hearing. All the while, John Paul II feted Fr. Maciel in Rome and praised him for his devotion to orthodoxy. The cleansing of this sordid mess fell to his successor, Pope Benedict XVI.

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