INQUIRER Global Nation

NEW YORK, United States?Last December, the Vatican began the process by which both Pope Pius XII and John Paul II will most likely be included in the pantheon of recognized saints.

In its announcement that had Pope Benedict XVI?s blessing, the church declared both popes to have been marked by ?heroic virtue,? the step that precedes beatification and ultimately canonization.

I don?t doubt that the chances of these two being officially enshrined as saints look excellent, and for reasons some of which have nothing to do with saintliness and everything to do with politics, particularly in the case of the World War II pontiff.

David Gibson, author of a biography of Benedict XVI, writing in The New York Times in late January, points out that the Vatican?s decision ?renewed longstanding debate over Pius?s World War II legacy (was he silent or even complicit in the Nazi extermination of the Jews?).?

Gibson then raises a very good question, ?Should any pope be made a saint?? thereby questioning the process by which the institution will most likely canonize two of its former heads, and thereby set a precedent of making every pope from hereon a saint.

Kind of like having the head of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts expect canonization as Supreme, or rather, National, Artist when done with the office (though in the case of the current NCCA head, Cecile Guidote Alvarez, she seems to have simply taken the crown and placed it on her head).

Gibson gives us some background context: Of the 264 dead popes in its two-millennium history, less than a third were elevated to sainthood, and ?most were canonized by popular acclaim in the first centuries of Christianity, often because they were martyrs.?

The one who comes immediately to mind of course is St. Peter, the petras or rock upon which the church was founded. On his insistence, the former fisherman was crucified upside down. He didn?t feel worthy enough to be nailed to the cross in an upright position the way Jesus was.

Gibson, as with so many others, is bothered more by the impending sainthood of Pius XII, or Eugenio Pacelli, than by that of John Paul II, whom the Jews considered a good friend. Pacelli was the 260th successor to Peter, from 1939-1958; prior to that he was papal nuncio to Germany in the 1920s, and was named Pius XI?s Secretary of State.

In his powerful role, Pacelli was the main architect of the concordat with the Reich, signed in 1933, which significantly helped the Nazis strengthen their hold on the German government without any organized opposition from the powerful German Catholic community, leaving the latter with little leverage over Hitler and his cabal.

Fervently anti-Communist, Pacelli feared the possible triumph of the hammer and sickle more than he did that of the swastika. Once he succeeded Pius XI as pontiff, he remained complicit with how the Nazis operated. He refused, for instance, to censure the Nazi invasion and annexation of Poland in 1939, and the ensuing atrocities, but condemned the Soviet Union?s invasion of Finland. He has thus been criticized as not speaking out while the Holocaust was happening even as he and the Vatican knew what was happening.

?Silence,? however, is not the term a Vatican higher-up would use. José Saraiva Cardinal Martins insists it was ?prudence.? Given the conditions of World War II, this reasoning goes, the supreme head of the Roman Catholic Church had no choice but to mute its criticism of Hitler, in order to protect the millions of Catholics living under the Nazi jackboot.

From this perspective, Pius XII was acting in his capacity as temporal CEO and chairman of the board, the shepherd protecting his flock. But was he serving the higher spiritual calling the church is purportedly devoted to by turning a blind eye to the genocide of the Jews?

Prudence is not a quality one associates with a saint, whose eyes are set on eternal life. Whether one agrees with the whole concept of sainthood or not, no one can deny that those who would be saints cast reasonableness aside. They are foolhardy, stubborn, and even long for death.

Those early Christians tremblingly cast prudence aside when forced by the Romans to either make sacrifices to their gods or themselves be sacrificed, to be torn apart in the Roman Colosseum by wild beasts. Was St. Joan of Arc prudent when brought before a tribunal of men convinced she was a heretic and a blasphemer? Was Saint Lorenzo Ruiz? Had this fervent Catholic Pinoy denied his faith he would have saved himself from the wrath of the Japanese. The case Cardinal Martins makes is rather pitiful.

The other related charge made against Pacelli is that he was anti-Semitic, still of the school of thought that it was the Jews who got Christ crucified, overlooking the fact that it was the Romans (Pacelli?s forebears) who decided to nail the carpenter?s son to the cross.

The irony, as so many have observed, is that this is anti-Semitism in service of a Semite. In 2003, the Greek filmmaker Costa Gavras, director of acclaimed and politically charged works like Z and Missing, came out with Amen. Based on the play, The Deputy, by Rolf Hochhuth, Amen revolves around the discovery by a German army medical officer, and devout Catholic, that the gas he has invented is being used to put inmates at concentration camps to death. He tries to warn the Vatican, aided by an idealistic young Jesuit priest who manages to get word to Pius XII, though it?s clear that the pontiff already knows about the horrific deaths. Partly fact (the German officer did exist) and partly fiction (the Jesuit), the film is well worth watching.

All of these raise substantial, even insurmountable, barriers to this particular pope?s being canonized. But perhaps the larger consideration is the need for saints. The church says it doesn?t make saints, but merely recognizes them, that is, it confirms that certain mortals have wound up in heaven for all eternity. But this is a distinction without a difference.

Those who pray to saints do so to those approved by the Vatican. Aside from her faithful progeny, who else would pray to anyone?s mother?the first candidate we think of when we think of saint, for having undergone the pain of bringing us into this world and enduring the limitless trials of making sure we grew up strong and healthy. And those mothers who manage to do this when mired in poverty are truly saints. (Of course, it?s mutual: Most mothers think of their sons and daughters as little divinities, in spite of evidence to the contrary.)

People in search of role models and succor pray to saints so that these can intercede on their behalf, making sure that one?s request wends its way quickly through the celestial bureaucracy and winds up in the In Box of the Ultimate Decider. It?s an anthropomorphic albeit feudal scenario that every Filipino who has had to deal with the government appreciates.

Who?s your daddy? Malakas ba? Judging by the mess our country is in and correlating that with our national custom of kneeling and praying for divine intercession for every personal and public crisis, could it be that we pray to the wrong saints? On the other hand, those held responsible for the mess the nation is in and who seem to lead for the most part charmed lives must surely have more powerful patrons. Where, pray, has prayer gotten us?

In the hamlet of San Juan Chamula, just outside San Cristobal de las Casas, the capital of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico and home turf of the Zapatistas, one indigenous group has the right idea when it comes to saints.

In the village church, where no photographs are allowed, one sees several statues of saints. It?s impossible to identify them, however, for the simple reason that they have been beheaded. They have gone topless, though not toppled, for these heavenly beings failed to answer the villagers? prayers.

And so as punishment, they had their noggins lopped off. Were the same cri du coeur to be adopted in the Philippines?off with their heads!?I don?t doubt that the houses of worship throughout the length and breadth of the archipelago would soon be lined with similarly bereft icons. Perhaps then we would spend more time off our knees and raising hell on the streets as a way of getting into a more secular heaven.