WARSAW (CNS): Tens of thousands gathered for Masses, concerts, exhibitions, youth vigils and silent marches in various Polish towns and cities on April 2 to mark the first anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s death.
Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz was among an estimated 15,000 people who placed flowers and candles outside the headquarters of Krakow archdiocese, where then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was archbishop until his 1978 papal election.
In Warsaw, Cardinal Jozef Glemp told Catholics at an open-air Mass in Pilsudski Square that Pope John Paul had been “chosen as pope by divine providence” to lead the Church into the third millennium “with the genius of thought and faith drawn from his homeland”.
The commemorations followed the April 1 completion of a tribunal for Pope John Paul’s sainthood cause in Krakow.
The tribunal gathered more than 800 pages of testimony from more than 100 Polish witnesses at 29 sessions spread over five months.
The Polish-born head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, told the Polish Press Agency that relics of the pope were expected to be transferred to Krakow’s Wawel Cathedral after the pope is beatified, a step toward sainthood.
