Pope John XXIII - Legacy and Beatification

Legacy and Beatification

He was known affectionately as "Good Pope John" and "the most beloved Pope in history" to many people. On 3 September 2000, John was declared "Blessed" by Pope John Paul II, the penultimate step on the road to sainthood. He was the first pope since Pope Pius X to receive this honour. Following his beatification, his body was moved from its original burial place in the grottoes below St Peter's Basilica to the altar of St. Jerome and displayed for the veneration of the faithful. At the time, the body was observed to be extremely well preserved—a condition which the Church ascribes to embalming and the lack of air flow in his sealed triple coffin rather than to a miracle.

When John's body was moved, the original vault above the floor was removed and a new one built beneath the ground; it was here that the body of Pope John Paul II was entombed from 2005 to 2011 before being moved for his beatification in 2011.

The date assigned for the liturgical celebration of John XXIII is not 3 June, the anniversary of his death, as would be usual, but 11 October, the anniversary of his opening of the Second Vatican Council. He is also commemorated in the Anglican Communion.

From his early teens, he maintained a diary of spiritual reflections that was subsequently published as Journal of a Soul. The collection of writings charts Roncalli's efforts as a young man to "grow in holiness" and continues after his election to the Papacy; it remains widely read.

Sedevacantist and Conclavist groups have been some of Pope John's most outspoken critics. The more extreme devotees of Our Lady of Fátima also believe that Pope John deliberately held back secret prophetic information revealed during an apparition of the Virgin Mary. This is perhaps the basis for Internet reports in the late 1990s about the supposed discovery of Pope John's diary in which he allegedly wrote about receiving prophetic insight into the future, including the return of Jesus in New York in 2000. Catholic Church authorities give absolutely no credence to these rumours. Although Pope John did have a diary, there is no evidence in it to suggest that he received apocalyptic visions of the future.

In 2003, The Guardian newspaper found a confidential communique from John to Catholic bishops, allegedly mandating confidentiality in matters of pederasty with the threat of excommunication. These allegations were later denied by Archbishop Vincent Gerard Nichols, Chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults. Nichols explained that the communique "is not directly concerned with child abuse at all, but with the misuse of the confessional. This has always been a most serious crime in Church law."

The opening titles of Pier Paolo Pasolini's film "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" (1964) dedicates the film to the memory of John XXIII.