'ST' JOHN PAUL I? SALESIAN PROCURATOR TO HELP
ROME: 26th September -- If it were left to the people to decide (as once was the case, more or less) then the smiling face of Albino Luciani - Pope John Paul I - would already be called saintly, and maybe this is what will matter most in the coming process to formally open on 23rd November. John Paul I died suddenly on 29th September 1978 after just 33 days on the throne of Peter. By special request of the Bishop of Belluno, Vincenzo Savio, Salesian Procurator General (the role involves a full-time task just dealing with the scores of Venerables, Blesseds, Saints in the Salesian Family) Fr. Pasquale Liberatore has been asked to look after the Cause to determine the holiness of life and heroic virtue of Albino Luciani.
"The people who signed the request to open this Cause have already witnessed to the fact that his (Pope John Paul I's) sanctity is a simple sanctity" said Fr. Liberatore in a recent interview with the Milan Daily, Corriere della Sera. Liberatore also pointed out that this simplicity was a family trait and the trait of an entire people. In fact the Cause, which one might think would be opened in Rome, has been transferred to Belluno, where Luciani was born and where he spent 46 years of his life. It will say much about the wonderful environment that helped make him the person he was. Fr. Liberatore is already at the stage of a collection in nine volumes of the published writings of Luciani. Yet to come are unedited collections of letters and other documentation. He foresees some 60 witnesses from three key places and periods: Belluno-Vittorio Veneto, naturally,Venice where he was Patriarch, and Rome, Pope for 33 days.
Meanwhile what remains, Cause or no Cause, is the famous smile. Fr. Liberatore speaks of this smile as it might be one day spoken of in the august terms of a formal proclamation of holiness: "It was an expression of hope that is a theological virtue. It was Luciani himself who once said :'Hope is the Christian life's smile'.
