I just ran across this article from last fall, from what appears to be an Italian wire service. So a step ahead is soon in store – it could even be taking place right now — in Papa Luciani’s beatification process. I must, however register my opinion contrary to that of the postulator, about the venue for the beatification ceremony – no beatification ceremony for a Pope should be held anywhere but in Rome, and it should be presided over by the Pope! This is what was done for Pope John XXIII and for John Paul II. John Paul I deserves no less. It seems rather unlikely that Pope Benedict, who knew Luciani personally and has a strong devotion to him, will survive long enough to preside – he’ll be 88 or 89 – but we can always hope.

Tuesday October 11, 2011

PAPA LUCIANI’S POSTULATOR: BEATIFICATION AT LEAST FOUR YEARS AWAY

(AGI) – Citta del Vaticano, October.

It will take “at least four or five years,” but John Paul I will follow in the wake of his predecessor and will rise to the honors of the altars as a blessed. In the coming months, in fact, Monsignor Enrico dal Covolo, postulator of the cause for beatification for Albino Luciani, the cardinal patriarch of Venice, who in August 1978 was elected Pope after Paul VI but reigned for only 33 days, thus opening the way for the election of a non-Italian after 500 years – will hand in the “Positio” to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, which will now have to examine it and subject it to the approval of the theologians and of its members, and then propose to the reigning Pope the decree on the heroic nature of his virtues.
Named rector of the Lateran University by Benedict XVI and consecrated bishop by the Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, the Salesian Enrico dal Covolo has been able to keep the cause of the Pope from the Veneto precisely because it has now almost reached port. “We also have,” he confided to AGI, “a miracle that could be proposed to the Congregation and the Medical Commission, in as much as the previous study put forward by the Postulator’s office has had a favorable outcome.” It will be the Pope then, obviously, who decides where the rite of beatification will take place, but,” Dal Covolo anticipates, “it is probably that the choice will fall on Belluno, Luciani’s home diocese, where the preliminary process was experienced with great passion by the faithful.”
Among the many processes that he followed up to last year as postulator general of the Salesians, along with the cause of Luciani, Msgr. Dal Covolo has been able to preserve only one other, the one for the Polish layman Jan Leopold Tyranowski, who had a fundamental role in the formation of Karol Wojtyla. “He moved in Salesian circles, very much tied to the spirtuality of Don Bosco,” explains the prelate, who recalls how, though without forcing the time of the canonical cause that had been introduced, John Paul II, as a former disciple of this extraordinary teacher of spirituality, wanted to define Tyranowski “a true saint.”

Here’s a link to the Italian original.