Former popes to be made saints on April 27

The Vatican on Monday said late popes John Paul II and John XXIII would be made saints at an unprecedented joint ceremony on April 27, 2014 in a bid to unite Catholic conservatives and liberals.

Pope Francis made the historic announcement at a meeting of cardinals known as a consistory.

The canonisation of the two popes is expected to bring hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Rome.

The popular Polish pope John Paul and his Italian predecessor known as “Good Pope John”, are two of modern-day Catholicism’s most influential figures.

Polish Church leaders hailed the announcement.
“It will be a great day for the whole Church worldwide, for Poland’s Church and for our country,” episcopate spokesman Father Jozef Kloch told reporters in Warsaw.

But sainthood for the late Karol Wojtyla, the only pope from eastern Europe, comes at trying times for his native Church, which has been hit hard by a paedophilia scandal.

“I always knew I was at the service of a holy man,” Archbishop of Krakow Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul II’s former secretary, told the Polish press agency PAP.

The double sainthood is seen by Vatican watchers as an attempt to breach a traditional left-right divide in the Church.

“John XXIII is generally a hero to the Church’s progressive wing while John Paul II is typically lionised by Catholic conservatives,” said John Allen, from the National Catholic Reporter, a US weekly.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL – 2000: Pope John Paul II inserts a prayer into the Western Wall in Jerusalem