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Pope Francis blessed one of his predecessors, John Paul I – a short-serving pope known for his humility and joy, whose sudden death in his bedroom in 1978 shocked the world and sparked people over the years Doubt about his death.
The ceremony in St Peter’s Square on Sunday constituted the last formal step in the Vatican before possible sainthood for Albino Luciani, an Italian who died 33 days after being elected pontiff.
Pope Francis said in his sermon that John Paul I “smiled to convey the goodness of the Lord”.
Francis encouraged people to pray to the newly ordained pastor to “get the smile of our souls”.
Last year, Francis sanctioned a miracle, thanks to the intercession of John Paul I, in Buenos Aires in 2011, when a seriously ill 11-year-old girl recovered.
Candela Giarda, now a young woman, told a Vatican press conference last week via video message that she had wanted to attend the ceremony but could not because she recently broke her foot while training at the gym.
Sitting under the canopy outside St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis presided over the ceremony, which was accompanied by thunder, lightning and pouring rain, prompting the opening of umbrellas by cardinals, bishops, choirs and thousands of ordinary faithful in the square.
When elected pontiff on August 26, 1978, Luciani, 65, had been serving as patriarch of Venice, one of the church’s more prestigious positions.
In that role, and previously as bishop of northeastern Italy, Luciani warned against corruption, including in the banking world.
During his short papacy, which ended in the discovery of his body in his bedroom in the Apostolic Palace, John Paul I immediately established a simple, direct way to communicate with the faithful at the address he gave, This stylistic change was thought to revolutionize the sultry ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Those who supported him as a saint emphasized his deep spirituality and his tireless emphasis on key Christian virtues – faith, hope, and charity.
“Let’s pray, in his own words: ‘God accepts me with my flaws, with my flaws, but let me be who you want me to be,'” Francis said.
Francis said John Paul “lived without compromise” and praised Luciani for “overcoming the temptation to center on ‘I’ or seek glory”.
While the Vatican says John Paul died of a heart attack, it has given conflicting accounts of how his body was found.
First it said he was found by a priest who was his secretary, but later it admitted that John Paul was found by a nun who brought him his customary morning coffee.
With a huge financial scandal in Italy at the time involving figures linked to the Vatican Bank, secular media soon began to suspect that Luciani might have been poisoned by his intent to root out wrongdoing.
Books speculating on the circumstances of his death, especially since an autopsy was not conducted, have sold millions of copies.
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