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May 22, 2002
Pope John Paul II celebrates 82nd birthday
Pope canonizes 5 saints and meets with 7,000 youths for birthday
By John Thavis
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope John Paul II struggled through a busy birthday weekend at the Vatican, canonizing five new saints and meeting with 7,000 youths who came to help celebrate his 82 years and wish him many more.
But even as he joined in the festivities with young people May 18, the pope acknowledged his physical decline when he let an aide read part of his speech to the cheering, scarf-waving crowd. At times he appeared to have trouble breathing.
When the liturgy was over he asked Catholics to keep praying for him.
At the start of the Mass, Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, dean of the College of Cardinals, expressed day-after birthday wishes, telling the pope that canonizations were the kind of ceremony that "make your heart more youthful."
Hundreds of birthday wishes flooded into the Vatican from heads of state and other dignitaries, and several religious groups in Rome brought homemade cakes to the Vatican doors. The pope held a working lunch with four of his top aides on the special day.
The celebrations were partly overshadowed by renewed speculation over papal retirement, after three cardinals — including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, one of the pope's top aides — said they thought the pontiff would retire if he ever reached the point where he could not carry out the duties of the papacy.
None of the prelates said that time had arrived, however. On May 15, the pope responded to birthday greetings at a general audience, saying he relied on the spiritual support of the faithful "in order to continue faithfully in the ministry the Lord has entrusted to me."
For the pope, the birthday was a working day, but students from Christian Brothers' schools in Italy turned it into a celebration, singing "Happy Birthday" in several versions.
In what was clearly a planned move, he read only the beginning and end of his two-page talk to the group and sat listening as an aide read the longer middle section.
The Christian Brothers were celebrating the 300th anniversary of their activity in Italy, and the pope encouraged them to maintain their educational ministry among today's young people.
Afterward, the pope greeted the young people as they crowded around him for a blessing on the stage of the audience hall.
On the way back to his apartment, he took time to sprinkle holy water on a new statue, an image of St. Maria Josefa del Corazon de Jesus Sancho de Guerra, that had just been placed in a niche on the exterior of St. Peter's Basilica.
The next day, the pope celebrated the canonization Mass under intermittent rain in St. Peter's Square, proclaiming as saints five members of religious orders — four Italians and one Spaniard.
In a sermon that he read in its entirety, the pope said the five had preached and lived the Gospel "on the streets of the world," just as modern Christians should do.
The new saints are:
•St. Ignatius of Santhia, an 18th-century Italian Capuchin known for his ministry as a confessor and spiritual adviser.
•St. Umile da Bisignano, a Franciscan friar considered a "slow learner," but who showed gifts of mysticism and demonstrated a life of deep prayer up to the moment of his death in 1637. The pope said the Italian friar's humility and simplicity were qualities needed in today's material world.
•St. Pauline of the Suffering Heart of Jesus, an Italian who founded the Little Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, dedicated to serving the poor, sick and elderly. She died in 1942 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and her order is active throughout South America and Africa.
•St. Benedetta Cambagio, a 19th-century Italian who lived as a married woman for two years and then agreed with her husband to live chastely, as "brother and sister." The two eventually entered religious orders, and St. Benedetta founded a congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of Providence, which worked with young girls.
•St. Alphonsus of Orozco, a 16th-century Spanish Augustinian friar, who devoted his life to the needy and wrote ascetical and mystical works.
The pope, seated beneath a canopy as the rain turned heavy, gave a noon blessing after the Mass and read a short talk.
He thanked everyone for the birthday wishes and in particular for the "special prayers for my person and for the fulfillment of my Petrine (papal) service, entrusted me by the Lord."
The pope was to depart three days later on his 96th foreign trip, to Azerbaijan and Bulgaria. It was the first of three trips in coming months: in July he travels to Toronto for World Youth Day, then to Mexico and Guatemala; in August, he will return to his native Poland.
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