THE BEATIFICATION of the late Pope John Paul II may be delayed because the Vatican’s Congregation for the Cause of Saints wants to examine the late pope’s 55-year-long correspondence with Polish woman Wanda Poltawska.
The congregation is the Holy See department which oversees all beatification processes.
In an interview with Turin daily La Stampathis week, Portuguese cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Cause of Saints, said: "Knowing now that Wanda Poltawska is the custodian of this huge documentation . . . I consider it absolutely indispensable that we ask to see everything.
“We are talking here about 55 years of correspondence, a whole lifetime and therefore an extra research is called for – all the more because the existence of such a copious exchange of letters between a pope and a friend from his youth is highly unusual.”
Wanda Poltawska first met the late pontiff in the immediate post-war years, at a time when she was trying to come to terms with the harrowing experience of internment at the Nazi’s Ravenbruck concentration camp. The two remained in contact from then until the pope’s death in 2005, during which time Wanda, her husband and her children were often guests in the Vatican or at the papal summer palace of Castelgandolfo.
On Monday, Don Stanislao Dziwisz, the cardinal of Cracow and for years the pope’s private secretary, criticised Ms Poltawska’s recent decision to publish some of the vast correspondence, saying: “Ms Poltawska claims to have had a unique relationship and special link to the pope which in reality did not exist. As a priest, as a bishop and as pope, Karol Wojtyla maintained contacts with a multitude of people that he had known in his youth in Poland.”
However, Monsignor Adam Boniecki, for years the editor of the Polish edition of the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, yesterday told La Stampathat the late pope's relationship with Ms Poltawska was something very special, explaining: "This is much more than just 55 years of letter writing. Wojtyla believed that Wanda had suffered for him in the concentration camp and he always felt a certain responsibility for her. She feels that she is the only person to know the inner truth of the complexity and grandeur of John Paul II."
Extracts from the correspondence published this week by La Stampareveal nothing improper but are testimony to an intense, spiritual friendship between the two. Vatican insiders suggest that the examination of the documentation may see the beatification delayed until next year, if not later.