John Paul II's beatification may be delayed by further research: report

Examination of correspondence between Pope John Paul II and one of his Polish friends may delay the late Pope's beatification, it has emerged.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints wants to examine the late pope’s 55-year-long correspondence with Polish woman Wanda Poltawska, which has only emerged recently, according to a report in  yesterday's Irish Times.

The congregation is the Holy See department which oversees all beatification processes.

Portuguese Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for Causes of Saints, said this week in an interview with Italian paper La Stampa: “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 is a child psychiatrist, and author of several books about children. She met the Pope in 1950 at confession and was overwhelmed by the holiness of the then Wojtyla. "From the first moment I saw him, I knew he would become a saint.  He radiated an interior light which was impossible to hide," she is quoted as saying.

Dr Poltawska's was a prisoner at Ravenbruck concentration camp during the war, where she was subjected to "medical" experiments. In 1962 she was miraculously cured of cancer, having turned to Wojtyla, the then bishop of Crakow, who invoked Padre Pio. Immediately she was better. And according to Blitz, an online Italian newspaper, she was one of the first people the Pope called when he was elected pope.  In addition, when he was shot by Mehmet Alì Agca, Wanda was present at the Vatican.

The two remained in contact throughout the Pope's life until his 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 Stampa that 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 Stampa reveal 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.