“Blessed” or Cursed John Paul II?His Papal Beatification
by Shaun Willcock
The previous pope of Rome, John Paul II, was beatified on the 1st May by his successor, Benedict XVI, in a lavish and globally-visible ceremony at the Vatican, six years after his death on the 2nd April2005. It was, in the words of the director of the Vatican newspaper, “a historic event which has no precedent.” Internationally, Roman Catholics welcomed the beatification, and informally he was already being called, by Roman Catholics and many others, “Pope John Paul the Great.” Beatification is the penultimate step to canonisation; and to be canonised means to be declared a “saint” within the Roman Catholic religion. What does all this mean? Try to follow carefully now, for it’s complicated and completely unbiblical, but you need to grasp it:
Who are Saints, and Who Goes to Heaven?
The very first thing to understand is the difference between Roman Catholicism and the true teaching of the Bible on heaven, and who goes there. According to Rome, only those in heaven are, strictly speaking, “saints”. And what’s more, the moment the average Papist dies, he does not go to heaven immediately, but to purgatory – an invented place, a non-existent place with absolutely no scriptural support, a place in fact which the Papists adopted from the teachings of ancient heathenism. Only a very few Papists supposedly ever bypass purgatory and go directly to heaven when they die, and it is these extraordinary few who are declared to be “saints” by Rome. The teaching of the Bible is very different. Biblically, every single person who is converted is a “saint”. Saints are simply Christians.
Saints are not dead people whom Rome pompously pronounces to be “saints”, but true believers, whether living on earth or living in heaven. In Phil. 4:21 Paul writes, “Salute every saint in Christ Jesus.” Meaning simply, Greet every one of the Christians. It would be impossible for the Philippian believers to salute the saints in heaven! In Acts 9:13, Ananias prayed and said, “Lord, I have heard by many of this man [Saul of Tarsus], how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem.” Saul could not have done evil to the saints in heaven, for they are out of reach; and if there were saints at Jerusalem, then they were very much alive on earth. Clearly, Christians, even while alive on this earth, are saints. In Acts 26:10 Paul confesses that before his conversion he imprisoned “many of the saints” – they must have been saints on earth for him to be able to do this to them. Of Peter it is written that he “came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda” (Acts 9:32).
Well, if they dwelt at Lydda, they were not yet dwelling in heaven. In v.41 Peter “called the saints” – he called them to see Lydia who had been raised from the dead, he didn’t “call” them by praying to them in heaven! In Rom. 1:7 Paul writes “to those that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints” – he was writing to living saints on earth, not those in heaven. How tragic that in Rome today there sits a false “Church”, which teaches the very opposite of what the apostle taught, in his epistle to the true Church in Rome. And every single saint, or Christian, goes immediately to heaven when he dies. There is no purgatory, for Christ Jesus has “by himself purged our sins” (Heb. 1:3)! Paul wrote that he had “a desire to depart, and to be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23); he knew that at the moment of death he would be with Christ in heaven! In 2 Cor. 5:6-8 he wrote, “whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord”, and, “We are... willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” At death, the believer goes to be with the Lord in heaven. The teaching of Rome, then, is completely false, for it is completely unbiblical. But it gets stranger, even, than this:
Rome’s Doctrine of Prayer to the Dead
According to Rome, those who go straight to heaven when they die, and are “saints”, are declared to be able to intercede with God on behalf of living Roman Catholics down on earth! Roman Catholics, if they pray to the “saint”, will have the blessing of the “saint” going and interceding with God on their behalf for whatever they prayed for!
Here is the precise Popish teaching, according to its definitive Council of Trent: “the saints, who reign together with Christ, offer up their own prayers to God for men... it is good and useful suppliantly to invoke them, and to have recourse to their prayers, aid and help for obtaining benefits from God”.1 And again, this time from the authoritative documents of the Second Vatican Council: “For after they have been received into their heavenly home and are present to the Lord, through Him and with Him and in Him, they do not cease to intercede with the Father for us.” And: “The Church...has devoutly implored the aid of their intercession.”2
This too is utterly without foundation in the Word of God. Nowhere in all of Scripture are we taught to pray to dead people! Prayer is to be directed to God alone, for only He can hear it, only He can answer it, and only He must be worshipped – and prayer is a part of worship. We are to pray to the Father in the Name of the Son (Jn. 14:13,14; 16:23,24). No other prayer whatsoever is acceptable; in fact, it is very sinful. If those human beings now in heaven really could hear the prayers of all who were praying to them from all over the earth, this would mean they would have the powers of divinity! They would be gods! The true saints are in heaven, but they are not gods: they cannot hear or answer prayer.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the only Mediator between God and men (1 Tim. 2:5). Rome teaches that the “saints” in heaven can intercede with God on behalf of Papists on earth, and that Papists can and should invoke them. But there’s a problem. How are Romanists to know who are “saints” in heaven and who are not? After all, when a person dies, no one can see where the soul goes.
What if they are praying to one who is not in heaven but only in purgatory, and thus unable to answer them? Ah, but help is at hand: the Popish hierarchy claims the power to solve the problem! There is a way (so it is claimed) whereby it can be discovered who is a “saint” and who is not. The Papacy can declare it!
The Roman Catholic institution’s first step towards canonising a dead person is to declare him or her to be “Venerable”. This is done after an examination of the deceased’s life, etc. Being declared “Venerable” means the person is declared to be “heroic” in virtue, because he supposedly exhibited what are referred to by Rome as the “Seven Virtues” (a human invention and the opposite of that other invention of Rome, the so-called “Seven Deadly Sins”). These virtues are said to be prudence, justice, restraint or temperance, courage or fortitude, faith, hope, and charity or love – all of which must have been possessed to a heroic degree while the person was alive on earth. Then comes the next stage: beatification. This is what John Paul II has now been declared to be – beatified. The one who had previously been referred to as “Venerable” is now referred to as “Blessed”. But what does it mean and how does one get to be declared “Blessed”? Well, for one thing, “The proclamation of a Saint or of a Blessed by the Church is the fruit of putting together various aspects regarding a specific Person.... the sine qua non condition is the holiness of the person’s life, verified during the precise and formal canonical proceedings.”3 And then, for another thing, it must be proved that some miracle has been attributed to the dead person’s intercession with God! And who is to authoritatively pronounce that the “miracle” is genuine? You guessed it, the Papacy itself. It’s a stacked deck.
But here the poor deluded Papist is presented with a problem. Until the Papacy finally and authoritatively declares the dead one to be “Blessed” and therefore capable of hearing prayers from Papists here below and interceding with them in heaven to God, how can anyone be100% sure that the dead person really is in heaven, and really is able to intercede with God for them? They thus pray to one who, for all they know, could still be in purgatory, and thus unable to answer any prayers – but when their prayer is supposedly answered, this is taken as proof that the dead person is in
fact “Blessed” and answering prayer! Doesn’t your head start to swim? This is truly a classic circular argument.
Rome can’t declare the person “Blessed” until a miracle is attributed to that person’s intercession for someone on earth, and yet the one on earth who’s invoking the dead person can’t be sure the dead person can even hear his prayers until he is declared “Blessed” by Rome! How devastatingly tragic, that all these millions of faithful Roman Catholics are going through this convoluted, complicated, unscriptural, heathenish rigmarole in the fervent hope that by invoking some “saint” their prayer will be answered (or at least one they hope is in heaven and therefore a “saint”), when the Lord Jesus Christ said to His true followers, “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you” (Jn. 16:23). How simple, and how sublime! Prayer to God the Father in the Name of God the Son. For He is the one and only Mediator between God and men (1 Tim. 2:5), and no sinful, dead human being can intercede with the Father for those alive on earth! To teach otherwise is blasphemous.
Rome’s Macabre Use of “Relics”
Next, there is the declaration “Non Cultus”, which has to be issued before canonisation can occur. This means that they declare that no cult has formed around the potential “saint”, or around his tomb.
It’s difficult to see how they can actually prevent this from happening, once they have authoritatively declared that a “miracle” has been attributed to his intercession. But anyway, moving on: At this stage in the proceedings, too, the candidate’s body is exhumed. And then for the really macabre part: “relics” are taken from the exhumed body! And what are “relics”? Relics are things that once belonged to a “saint”, or even parts of his or her body! Great powers have always been attributed to these “relics” by Rome, and these items are actually worshipped by Papists! According to Rome’s authoritative Council of Trent, “the holy bodies of holy martyrs, and of others now living with Christ... are to be venerated by the faithful, through which (bodies) many benefits are bestowed by God on men.”4
Like so much else within Popery, relic worship was adopted from ancient heathenism, where it was practiced, for example, in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and within the Buddhist religion. It can be traced back, in fact, to the religious system which began in ancient Babel soon after the flood.
John Paul II’s body has not as yet suffered this macabre indignity, for the simple reason that it has not been in the coffin too long. But at some stage before he is finally canonised, it will happen. And “relics” will be removed. Body parts, in other words! And they call this religion a “Christian church”! It is nothing but baptized paganism, to quote the words of Alexander Hislop in his classic work, The Two Babylons.
And so, finally, there comes the last stage in the whole complicated and disgusting rigmarole: canonisation. To be “canonised” means to be recognised and officially declared by Rome to be a “saint”. Canonisation doesn’t “make” a person a saint, it merely recognises that he always was a saint. But before the dead person can be canonised, a second miracle has to be attributed to his intercession. Once this is established and the deceased is canonised, this means that Rome officially recognises that the deceased has achieved the state of “beatific vision”, meaning he can see God in a literal sense.
Why John Paul II Has Been Beatified So Hastily
For many who have been canonised by Rome, the process has taken centuries; for most, at the very least, it takes many years. There is meant to be a five-year waiting period after the person’s death before an investigation into the possibility of canonisation is opened, although this rule can be waived by the Roman pope. And in 2005 Benedict XVI did just that. Explaining away the waiving of the usual five-year waiting period, a communiqué from the Congregation for Saints’ Causes stated: “It is well known that, by pontifical dispensation, his cause began before the end of the five-year period which the current norms stipulate must pass following the death of a Servant of God. This provision was solicited by the great fame of sanctity which Pope John Paul II enjoyed during his life, in his death and after his death.”5 Nonsense. This unbecoming haste has nothing to do with the much-vaunted heavenly piety and holiness of the late John Paul II, but everything to do with very earthly, very worldly politics.
Vatican politics, specifically. The real reason for the hasty scramble to beatify the man was because, at a time of worldwide anger directed towards Rome because of the priestly sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic institution, the Vatican desperately needed something to boost its fortunes.
The beatification of the most popular and beloved pope in modern times, and perhaps of all time, was just what was needed. The Romish hierarchy saw the adulation of the immense crowds at John Paul’s funeral, who chanted, “Santo subito!” (“Sainthood, now!”), and they were not slow to capitalise on the depth of feeling for the late pope. They moved so swiftly that Giovanni Maria Vian, the director of the Vatican newspaper, said the beatification would be “a historic event which has no precedent”, for “one has to go back to the heart of the Middle Ages to find similar examples, but in contexts that are in no way comparable to Benedict XVI’s decision.”6 He explained that no pope of Rome has beatified his immediate successor in the last ten centuries.
And there’s another reason for the hasty beatification. Although John Paul II was the most popular pope in modern times and possibly of all time, the fact remains that he still firmly maintained the traditional Roman Catholic stance against contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and the role of women in the “Church”. Now these are precisely the issues which many modern, liberally-minded Roman Catholics are questioning, and there are constant calls from liberal Papists for the “Church” to re-examine and even change its traditional stance on these matters. But by beatifying and eventually canonising this extremely popular pope who nevertheless maintained the Roman Catholic institution’s position on these issues, the Vatican hierarchy is hoping it will go a long way towards silencing such critics. After all, if these are the things “Blessed” and eventually “Saint” John Paul II stood for, who could dare criticise them?
Thus Benedict decided, only months after John Paul had died, to fast-track the road to “sainthood” by waiving the normal five-year waiting period. And ever since then, things have moved very, very rapidly for the Vatican, as John Paul’s beatification case was rushed through all the various steps.
A “Miraculous” Healing Attributed to the Intercession of the Dead John Paul II
As we have seen, in order for any Papist to be beatified, be he pope or peasant, at least one miracle must be attributed to his intercession. What this means in practice is that it is claimed – and supposedly proven – that some Papist who prayed for some miracle to be performed through the intercession of the dead one with God, actually received the miracle from the deceased. In John Paul’s case, the “miracle” that was paraded before the world concerned a French nun, Marie Simon Pierre Normand, who (so it was claimed) requested God to grant her healing through the intercession of John Paul II, whom she invoked, and was miraculously healed of Parkinson’s disease – the very disease from which John Paul II had suffered. The case was investigated by the Vatican medical board and a group of theologians, and was approved; in other words, they found it to be a genuine miracle of healing. No surprise there: the Vatican desperately wanted to beatify John Paul II – desperately needed to beatify him, from its own perspective – so its own medical board and its own Roman Catholic theologians approved the “miracle”. Imagine that.
Back in 2007, it was reported that the nun, supposedly miraculously healed, had suffered a relapse – something the “Church” of Rome denied, of course. According to the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes, its medical and legal experts, “having studied the depositions and the entire documentation with their customary scrupulousness, expressed their agreement concerning the scientifically inexplicable nature of the healing.” Thereafter, the Vatican theological consulters evaluated the case, and “unanimously recognized the unicity, antecedence and choral nature of the invocation made to Servant of God John Paul II, whose intercession was effective in this prodigious healing.”
Next, during the ordinary session of the Congregation, its prelate-members expressed their “unanimous approval.” They expressed their belief in the miraculous nature of the nun’s recovery, “having been achieved by God in a scientifically inexplicable manner following the intercession of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, trustingly invoked both by Sister Simon herself and by many other faithful.”7 Oh, they piously attribute the “miracle” to God ultimately – but only after the nun prayed to the dead John Paul, and the dead John Paul supposedly interceded with God on her behalf! In other words, God may have had a hand in the healing, but it was all thanks to the intercession of a dead pope, after he was invoked in prayer by a living nun!
And these devil-blinded men (2 Cor. 4:4), along with over a billion of the world’s inhabitants, cannot see the sheer blasphemy of what they are claiming! After their approval, the final judgment had to be issued by the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, after which Benedict XVI had to sign a decree formally recognising the “miracle”. Clearly both the Congregation and Benedict were perfectly willing to do what they had to do, and accordingly a communiqué issued by the Congregation announced on the 14th January that Benedict “authorized the dicastery to promulgate the decree of the miracle attributed to the intercession of Venerable Servant of God John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla).”
Attempted Communication with the Dead is Occult Necromancy!
Prayers to the dead – apart from the blatant sin of praying to anyone but God, for only God can hear and answer prayer – are nothing less than necromancy! Necromancy is supposed communication with the dead, as in what is claimed to occur in spiritualist séances, and in one form or another it has been practiced, and is still practiced, in various heathen religions. It is listed with other occult practices and directly forbidden in the Word of God, for the dead cannot be communicated with, and it is contact with demons impersonating the dead: “There shall not be found among you any one that...useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord” (Deut. 18:10-12). And yet what does the official Catechism of the Roman Catholic institution – endorsed by John Paul II – claim? Here are the very words: “Communion with the dead.... Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping ‘them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.’” “We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world.”8 Thus, this very man taught the necromancy which is now being offered to him! The fact that the Roman Catholic religion permits and actually encourages necromancy, shows that (according to Deut. 18) all Roman Catholics are an abomination unto the Lord, unless they repent and believe the true Gospel, and turn from this false heathenish religion to the Lord Jesus Christ! John Paul II, as the very head of this iniquitous religious system, was an abomination unto the Lord, and died in his sins.
John Paul II: Cursed, Not “Blessed”
Some months prior to his beatification the Vatican’s spokesman, Jesuit priest Federico Lombardi, said of John Paul II when announcing the date on which he would be beatified: “The Church recognizes that Karol Wojtyla gave eminent and exemplary witness of Christian life, he is a friend and an intercessor who helps the people to direct themselves to God and to encounter him.” He said that John Paul’s works should be admired “precisely because they are an expression of the depth and authenticity of his relationship with God, of his love for Christ and for all human persons, beginning with the poor and the weak; of his tender filial love for the Mother of Jesus.” He then added that John Paul’s legacy is “his desire to celebrate and proclaim Jesus the Redeemer and Savior of man”.9 Let’s just dissect this Jesuit’s fawning praise heaped on John Paul’s head:
Did he really give “eminent and exemplary witness of Christian life”? Did he really have a deep and authentic “relationship with God”? Did he really “love Christ”? The answers are No, No, and No. John Paul II was, quite simply and very tragically, not a Christian. A true Christian does not have “tender filial love for the Mother of Jesus”; the Jesuit said in one breath that John Paul had a relationship with God and love for Christ, and a relationship of sonship with Mary! True Christians do not worship Mary, pray to Mary, sing to Mary, ask Mary for help, or give glory to her in any way – but John Paul II did all these things. This is nothing less than demon-worship: for the true Mary, the humble mother of the Lord, died in the first century AD, and her soul went to heaven as
the souls of all true Christians do. The “Mary” of Roman Catholicism is a goddess, elevated to a position of power equal with that of the Roman Catholic “Christ”. This “Mary” is a demon, receiving the worship millions give him under this name.
The “Christ” of Roman Catholicism is, in any case, not the Christ of God! The “Christ” of Roman Catholicism is a “false Christ”; “another Jesus” (Matt. 24:5,24; 2 Cor. 11:4). The pope of Rome himself, in fact, has been declared to be, in official Roman Catholic documents, “another Christ”, “another God on earth”, “Christ in office, Christ in jurisdiction and power”, “our Lord God the Pope”, “Jesus Christ Himself, hidden under the veil of flesh”! Thus the pope of Rome himself is one of the false Christs of Romanism (another being the mass-wafer): how can he be a true Christian? It is an utter impossibility!
John Paul II, in addition, rejected the teachings of the Word of God, and upheld the lying doctrines of Rome in their place. For example, he placed the traditions of men on an equality with the written Scriptures; he worshipped idols himself, bowing in adoration before images of Mary and the so-called ‘saints”, and he encouraged all Roman Catholics to commit the same idolatry; he taught that a person is born again by the Romish sacrament of baptism; he believed that men should confess their sins to priests who have power to absolve them; he worshipped a piece of bread as Christ; he was devoted to Mary-worship; he firmly held that as the pope of Rome, he was the supreme pastor and teacher of all
“Christians” and as such, that he possessed infallible teaching authority when proclaiming a doctrine of faith or morals; he endorsed and encouraged the sinful occult practice of necromancy (communication with the dead); he actually beatified and canonised a huge number of dead people and thereby encouraged Roman Catholics to commit this same sin of necromancy; etc.
John Paul II, so far from being a Christian, was in fact, from the moment of his installation as pope of Rome, the biblical Antichrist (as all popes of Rome are). Not only was he a devout Papist, he was the head of the antichristian Papal system, described in Holy Scripture as “the Great Whore” (Rev. 17). He was the biblical Antichrist (1 Jn. 2:18), the biblical Man of Sin and Son of Perdition (2 Thess. 2:1-12). No Roman Catholic is a true Christian; how impossible it is, then, for the head of this monstrous religion to be a Christian!
And speak not of John Paul’s “humility” and “Christ-likeness”. Although in recent times it has become common for the Papal system to use terms of humility when referring to the popes (such as “servant of the servants of God”) rather than emphasising the terms of exaltation which have for centuries been applied to them, this does not change the fact that the Roman pope is the most arrogant of men, believing himself to be in the place of Christ on earth, and indeed to be Christ Himself in some way. John Paul’s much-vaunted “humility” was a sham. He was a vain, proud, arrogant man, just like every pope before him, full of his own importance and drunk with his power, demanding and receiving the deference and subjection of kings and presidents who always appeared dressed in black for any audiences with him as a sign of their lower status and subjection, and happily acknowledging the adulation of the hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics the world over. Is this man, then, “Blessed” of God? No! Far from being “Blessed”, he is in fact under the eternal curse of the God whom he blasphemed in his life. For the Word of the living God says, “If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:9). John Paul II preached a false gospel, and thus is under the curse of God for all eternity. Far from being “Blessed John Paul II”, he is a cursed one; the very “Son of Perdition” (2 Thess. 2:3).
The Iniquitous Beatification Ceremony
During the vigil held at Rome’s Circus Maximus during the night before the beatification ceremony, which was attended by 200 000 people, the nun who claims to have been healed by John Paul’s intercession gave her “testimony”. She said to the crowd, “John Paul II is looking upon us from heaven and smiling.”10 Apart from the tragic reality that John Paul is in hell, not heaven, it is amazing how many people, Protestants as well as Papists, have this absolutely false and unbiblical idea that people in heaven are looking down on those they loved on earth. There is nothing in all the Bible which even hints at such an idea, and indeed for those in heaven to be able to see all that is occurring on this sinful earth would take away from the perfect peace and joy which we know from Scripture that they are experiencing. It is thus a fallacy.
The beatification ceremony in Rome was attended by over one million pilgrims – the most crowded beatification in history. St Peter’s Square was packed, and the vast crowd stretched all the way back to the Tiber River, over half a kilometre away. In his homily, Benedict XVI said that John Paul II had blessed crowds thousands of times from his window overlooking the square, and then he said: “Bless us now.”11 This of course was a prayer to John Paul II – the sheer blasphemy of it all! Benedict read the formula of beatification, in Latin: “We grant that the venerable Servant of God John Paul II, Pope, henceforth be called Blessed and that his feast may be celebrated in the places and according to the regulations established by law, every year on October 22.”12 At that moment a smiling portrait of John Paul II was uncovered on a large banner that hung from the main loggia of St Peter’s Basilica. A huge shout of applause ascended from the thousands in St Peter’s Square, sweeping down Rome’s streets as thousands more followed the event on video screens.
World leaders were also present in large numbers to witness the event: 62 delegations led by heads of state and government, as well as royal families, besides the other countries officially represented. Not only such leaders of predominantly Roman Catholic countries such as the president and prime minister of Italy, the president of Poland, the presidents of Mexico and Honduras, and a representative of the European Union, and not only others such as the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and representatives of the royal families of Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and the (supposedly Protestant) United Kingdom, but even a country such as Israel was represented by a member of the Israeli Knesset.
How utterly tragic that today, so many Jews think the Vatican, which for so many centuries has been the deadly enemy of Jews, is now on their side. Even Zimbabwe’s illegally elected dictator-president, Robert Mugabe, attended! He was educated by the Jesuits – a fact which speaks volumes about the man he is – and although he is banned from travelling to the European Union because of the brutality of his government towards the people of Zimbabwe, the Vatican didn’t share these scruples and permitted him to attend. And this speaks volumes about the Vatican and the Roman Catholic institution! That an institution claiming to be the true Church of Jesus Christ on earth could permit a monster like Mugabe to attend the ceremony, shows to all the world (if the world paid any attention) just what kind of institution this really is. It welcomes into its embrace the unrepentant scum of the earth. But to those who were shocked by Mugabe’s presence at the beatification we would say: study history! The Roman Papacy through all its centuries of existence has always supported the very worst of dictators and tyrants, whenever it has deemed it beneficial to do so. Mugabe is by no means the first, and he will certainly not be the last brutal dictator
to be raised within the bosom of this Harlot religion, and to be supported by it afterwards. Birds of a feather flock together. The Bible says of the Great Whore, “with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication” (Rev. 17:2).
The Veneration of John Paul II’s Blood, and Other Bizarre Relics
Immediately after the mass was held at the beatification ceremony in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, Roman Catholics could pray before John Paul II’s mortal remains in his coffin, which was set in front of the main altar in St Peter’s Basilica. And then – again – for the really macabre part: a reliquary containing the blood of John Paul II was presented for veneration during the beatification ceremony! Yes, you read right. His blood! Where did they get it from? Well, towards the end of his life, in case a transfusion was needed, four vials of his blood were extracted but never used. Two of them were held at a hospital in Rome which runs a transfusion centre, and the other two were given to John Paul’s personal secretary. The liturgical celebrations office placed the two vials held at the hospital into two reliquaries, and one of these vials was presented during the beatification, and afterwards housed in the Vatican. The other was returned to the hospital. During the ceremony, the nun who was supposedly miraculously healed through John Paul II’s intercession, carried in procession the reliquary during the liturgy. She was accompanied by another nun who had assisted John Paul II’s physician.13
Now that is macabre indeed. But it is par for the course from Roman Catholicism, which is a religion of death, superstition, and such bizarre relics as the blood of “saints”, the fat from the body of one who was burned alive, toenail parings from another, a feather of the angel Gabriel, a number of heads of John the Baptist (each one claiming to be the genuine one), enough wood supposedly from the cross to fill a whole forest, a perspiration-soaked vest of Pius IX (claimed to be more potent precisely because it was unwashed), butter and cheese made from the milk of the Virgin (yes, really!), the diapers of the baby Jesus, and other such claims. They even claim to possess as a relic (in fact, more than one!) the foreskin of the Lord Jesus after He was circumcised!
Conclusion
And now the process starts for the eventual canonisation of John Paul II. It is not likely to take as long as most: Rome wants “Saint John Paul II”, and as soon as decently possible. Perhaps even as soon as indecently possible. All Bible-believing Christians must have the deepest compassion for the over one billion deluded Roman Catholics, who followed this accursed Man of Sin and Son of Perdition, John Paul II, during his life, and who now venerate him after his death and pray to him. And continue to follow his successor, the present Antichrist, Man of Sin and Son of Perdition, Benedict XVI, and the diabolical religion over which he presides as the supposed “Vicar of Christ”, to whom subjection is required for salvation according to Roman Catholic doctrine.
May 2011
Shaun Willcock is a minister of the Gospel. He runs Bible Based Ministries. For other articles (which
may be downloaded and printed), as well as details about his books, audio messages, pamphlets, etc.,
please visit the Bible Based Ministries website; or write to the address below. If you would like to be
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ENDNOTES:
1.Council of Trent, Session 25, “Decree on the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics of Saints, and on
Sacred Images”.
2.Vatican II, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church”, paras. 49, 50.
3.Excerpt of Decree for John Paul II’s Beatification, February 4, 2011. Zenit.org.
4.Council of Trent, Session 25, “Decree on the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics of Saints, and on
Sacred Images”.
5.Benedict XVI to Beatify John Paul II, January 14, 2011. Zenit.org.
6.Vian: John Paul II’s Beatification is “Historic”, January 20, 2011. Zenit.org.
7.Benedict XVI to Beatify John Paul II, January 14, 2011. Zenit.org.
8.Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, paragraphs 958 and 2683. United States Catholic
Conference, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1994, 1997.
9.Mercy Links John Paul II Life, Death, Beatification, January 14, 2011. Zenit.org.
10.Prayer Vigil Reveals Unknown Facts about John Paul II, April 30, 2011. Zenit.org.
11.The Witness, May 2, 2011.
12.1M Pilgrims Make for the Most Crowded Beatification Ever, May1, 2011. Zenit.org.
13.Vatican Prepares Relic of John Paul II’s Blood, April 29, 2011; and 1M Pilgrims Make for the Most
Crowded Beatification Ever, May1, 2011. Zenit.org.
