POPE PAUL VI, who banned contraception but presided over Vatican reforms in the 1960s, moved one step away from sainthood on Sunday as Pope Francis beatified him.
The beatification mass took place in a sun-drenched St Peter’s Square, with a red tapestry bearing an image of Paul VI smiling with open arms unfurled from the basilica.
“To this great pope, this brave Christian, this tireless apostle, we can say only one word today before God, as simple as it is sincere and important: thanks!” Francis said, drawing cheers and applause from tens of thousands of gathered pilgrims.
Thank you, dear and beloved pope Paul VI! Thank you for your humble and prophetic witness.
Francis’s predecessor, the arch-conservative Benedict XVI, was on hand for the event, timed to coincide with the end of a two-week meeting of the world’s bishops known as a synod, for it was Paul VI who started the Vatican tradition.
The just-ended synod was not as collegial as the late pope intended, however, failing to reach consensus on creating a more welcome stance towards gays and allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion.
Giovanni Battista Montini, a softly spoken cardinal from northern Italy, was elected pope in 1963 and held Saint Peter’s chair for 15 tumultuous years, which saw many believers and priests leave the Church as populist rebellions swept across the West.
His papacy was marked by a growing secularisation and liberation of morals, and while the polarisation of Cold War politics did little to ease his rule he was also hampered by a reputation for being weak and overly cautious.
But Paul VI is credited with being one of Pope Francis’s models, a humble man in many ways to whom the Argentine pope frequently refers in his speeches.
The intellectual Paul VI continued the Second Vatican Council launched by his predecessor Pope John XXIII in 1962, winding it up in 1965 and implementing its numerous reforms, including efforts to dialogue with other religions and a greater role for lay people.
Affirming the ban on contraception
He is most famous, however, for reaffirming the Church’s ban on artificial contraception — despite the fact that his own birth control commission, set up to advise the Vatican, voted overwhelming to lift the prohibition.
The decision enraged many Catholics at a time when believers were embracing sexual freedom and women were demanding the right to use the birth control pill.
Paul VI’s path to sainthood began earlier this year when the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved his first miracle, the apparent healing of an unborn child in 2001 in the United States who had a high risk of brain damage.
Doctors offered the mother an abortion, but she refused and instead prayed for Paul VI’s intercession using a fragment of the pope’s clothing given to her by a nun and her child, who is now 13 and appears to be healthy.
Francis was in his late 20s when Paul VI was elected and while it is yet to be seen whether he will stand firmer than the Italian pope, the pair share a sense of humility and openness towards people of all backgrounds.
Some of Francis’s actions have also echoed those of Paul VI before him, from the latter’s historic 1964 encounter in Jerusalem with the Patriarch of Constantinople to his 1965 speech to the United Nations in which he cried out an appeal for “no more war, never again!”
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