Friday, October 19, 2018

St. Pope Paul VI: Defender of the Rosary

Saint Pope Paul VI (1897-1978) was born in northern Italy and elected the Vicar of Christ during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Before being elected to the papacy, he had earned a doctorate in canon law and served as the Vatican Secretary of State, as well as the archbishop of Milan. Upon the death of St. Pope John XXIII, the Second Vatican Council was halted, but St. Pope Paul VI re-opened it and brought about its conclusion in 1965.

Saint Pope Paul VI was an extremely humble man. After his death, it became known that, during his papal visit to the Philippines in 1970, he had been stabbed in the chest in the Manila airport by a Bolivian poet and artist who had disguised himself as a priest. The man who stabbed him, Benjamin Mendoza, had purchased a dagger in a Muslim thrift shop.

Interestingly, the miracle that was approved for Pope Paul VI’s beatification was worked through the relic of the blood left on his vestment from the stabbing. The case involved an unborn child in his mother’s womb that had suffered brain defects during pregnancy. The mother’s physician advised her to abort the child, but the mother refused. Instead, she asked for the intercession of Pope Paul VI at the urging of a nun who gave her a holy card with a piece of the pope’s cassock from the attack in Manila. When the child was born, to the surprise of everyone, there were no brain defects.

Interestingly, it had been Pope Paul VI who wrote the landmark encyclical Humanae Vitae that defended all human life and condemned all forms of artificial birth control. Saint Pope Paul VI was known as the “pope of firsts” because he was the first pope to ever fly on a plane, the first pope to visit Fatima, and the first pope to visit the Holy Land since St. Peter. He was canonized on October 14, 2018. His feast day is celebrated on September 26.

Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC