Blessed John Paul’s virtues recalled at Thanksgiving Mass

(May 02, 2011) The love of God and man pushed late Pope John Paul not only in the faithful service of the Church but also in the total personal dedication to God and men that marked his path to holiness. This is how Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone described the virtues of the late pope on Monday while celebrating a Thanksgiving Mass in St. Peter’s Square for the beatification of John Paul II. Thousands of faithful and pilgrims who stayed on after Sunday’s Beatification attended Monday’s Mass in the same square. “His life was a constant prayer, a prayer that embraced with love each individual inhabitant of our planet,” Cardinal Bertone said in his homily. “Today we give thanks to the Lord,” the prelate said, “for giving us a Witness like him, who taught us how to live the faith and defend Christian values, starting with life, resolutely and without fear”. He said Blessed John Paul gave the Catholic Church an unprecedented moral authority and universal dimension at the global level. Cardinal Bertone also drew attention to John Paul’s last weeks and days when he had been deprived of all that which would seem shocking to man: physical strength, the expression of the body, the ability to move and even to speak. He knew that his physical frailty could show even more clearly that Christ works in history. “And offering his suffering to Him and to His Church, he gave us all a last, great lesson of humility and abandonment into the arms of God,” Cardinal Bertone added.