MeadMaker said:
I'm surprised that Pope Pius XIII didn't already canonize his predecessor:
http://www.truecarpentry.org/tccwww/cathwww/pope/
Sadly, on the wikipedia page devoted to Lucian Palvermacher, also known as Pope Pius XIII, His Holiness died on November 30. Oddly enough, there is no mention of this on their web sites, nor any news on a pending or recently completed Papal Conclave.
Maybe the College of Cardinals couldn't get time off from their jobs until after the first of the year or something?
Not unlike other political venues, the Catholic Church has its problems with liberal/conservative values. Pope John Paul II has been the RCC's best known liberal churchman, with his many reforms springing from his calling of the 2nd Ecumenical Council in Rome during his run as pope from 1958 to 1962. The following pope, Paul VI, was also considered a liberal, bringing many of the Ecumenical council's policy objectives into being. The popes following him have been very much more conservative.
A branch of the RCC split off in the era following Paul VI, known as the sedevacantist
WPs. The word comes from the official state of the church when the pope dies, and means literally "the chair is empty". They believe that that condition has been exactly that since John or Paul, depending on which ones you are talking to. These people now have their own version of catholicism in schism from Rome. The aforementioned Pius XIII is in this schismatic church, and therefore is not a pope in the Vatican's view. Hence no official notice taken in Rome (I don't actually know whether Meadmaker is talking about this ironically or doesn't know the history).
The people in this schism make
Opus Dei look like the Boy Scouts by comparison. These are the people that go about talking in terms of 13th century heresy, and wanting to burn people at the stake. They are mostly American, Australian, French and Italian people. The various apparitions of the BVM are real to them, and prophetic. While their main sticking point with John was modernism, they specifically believe that he didn't pay enough attention to these prophesies (like that of Our Lady of La Salette
WP, 1846, which prophesies that Rome would come under an antipope in the future), and indeed covered up prophesies that were supposed to be forthcoming from notes held by the pope from the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. Mary's veneration is very high among these people.
John Paul II is currently "blessed". There is infighting within the church that almost requires his elevation to be matched by Pius XII's, a conservative (of course) who was in office for a long, long time. It might also be some cause for friction that John Paul was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, The Italian Balzan Prize, and his death is noted officially by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Anglican Church of Canada. These sedevacantists very firmly believe that catholics only are going to heaven, and that breed for them has been whittled down a lot. Unusually for Catholics, these people believe firmly in John's
Revelation (see the above link to the apparition at La Salette, and the "secret" it contained).
That too used to be part of the process.
