This Sunday, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) and Karol Jozef Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) will be recognized as saints of the Catholic Church, and may God be praised for it! No one with the slightest amount of historical sensibility would doubt that these men were figures of enormous significance and truly global impact.
But being a world historical personage is not the same as being a saint; otherwise neither Therese of Lisieux, nor John Vianney, nor Benedict Joseph Labre would be saints. So what is it that made these two men worthy particularly of canonization, of being "raised to the altars" throughout the Catholic world?
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