Pope John Paul II beatification: what the media says

After the excitement of today’s royal wedding, Sunday May 1st marks the beatification of Pope John Paul II and the Vatican is preparing itself for a serious influx of pilgrims.
Not quite religious tourism in Rome, it marks an extremely special event for the city and the Italian media is full of sincere dedications to one of history’s most popular popes.

Our colleagues at 06blog are calling it Papa-mania (or pope-mania) on the streets of Rome, quoting the Inquirer who talks of the posters celebrating the beautification which adorn the souvenir shops of Rome.

It says: “A large souvenir shop on the edge of [St Peter’s] square has oil portraits of questionable taste and a life-size statue next to which tourists pose.
“As we already suggested above, Fox heads its beatification piece with the title “Royal Wedding takes spotlight from Vatican’s beatification.
” Apparently the estimated number of pilgrims has droppped, although Italian media last night was still carrying the estimated figure of about a million in Rome for the beatification.

More after the jump.
Numbers were quoted as dropping from a couple of million to as few as 250,000 pilgrims, but Mediabistro’s news is counting on just how big this beatification is for the world’s Catholics – and let’s face it, there are plenty of them around the globe who will be watching.

The news service has a brief guide on the tv news beatification coverage in the US and let’s just say they’re not leaving a minute of the 24-hours of May 1st uncovered.
The Telegraph reports the rather more disappointing news that £13 million pounds of counterfeit beatification souvenirs have been seized, although we’re still in the dark as to what exactly a genuine souvenir might be (not made in China?).
The Daily Mail has dedicated itself to a story on a new book which claims that the CIA tried to frame Bulgaria for the May 13, 1981 shooting of the Pope in order to discredit communism.
The new book says that the Bulgaria story was invented and that the real assassination attempt was by an anti-Western Turkish terrorist group which had some ties to Bulgaria, so the connection was exploited to discredit communism.
It’s part of many theories, though, none of which are fully confirmed by the end of the article and probably never will be at all by anyone.
And finally, in the lead-up to the Pope John Paul II beatification, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd asks if Karol Wojtyla really deserves the anointing, especially with regards to the ongoing silence from the Catholic Church and the Vatican as pedophilia scandals erupted around the world.
It’s a question that was bound to be asked and a hypothesis which has reverberated in many other newspapers as it seems we have inevitably come to the day when the world’s most popular Pope gets the official green light to sainthood.
The title? “Hold the halo” and it gives pause for thought.
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