VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) - As May 1, 2011 draws near, when the Venerable John Paul II will be raised to the Altar and receive the title "Blessed", the  Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments directed that he be remembered in a memorial every year beginning on October 22, 2011. The faithful throughout the world who gathered upon his death and cried out "Santo Subito" are now awaiting the confirmation of one more miracle attributable to the late Pope for him to be canonized. Then, we will call him what we all long for, Saint John Paul II.

In announcing the decree establishing the Feast the Congregation stated, "An exceptional character, recognized by the Catholic Church spread throughout the world, marks the beatification of Venerable John Paul II, of happy memory, which will take place May 1, 2011, in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, presided over by the Holy Father Benedict XVI. Given this extraordinariness, and following numerous requests regarding the cult of the new blessed, according to the places and forms established by law, this Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments is communicating in a timely manner what has been decided in this respect."

The date was chosen to memorialize the Inauguration of Pope John Paul II onOctober 22, 1978. I remember when a young, vibrant Polish Pope stepped out on to the balcony in St. Peters Square and signaled his mission with those memorable words: "Be Not Afraid! Open up, no; swing wide the gates to Christ. Open up to his saving power the confines of the State, open up economic and political systems, the vast empires of culture, civilization and development.. Be not afraid!"

His magisterium (teaching office) set a framework for what is becoming under his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, a new missionary age of the Catholic Church throughout the entire world. His teaching helped to bring about an authentic renewal of the Church. It reasserted the mission of the Church to engage and transform all of human culture, including the arts, politics, the academy, and economic and political realm - because no area of human experience is "off-limits" to the influence of the Gospel and the Church.

Pope John Paul II called all men and women to the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. He reminded us that only in Jesus Christ can we discover the purpose and fulfillment of human life. He proclaimed that human existence itself is an invitation to communion with God and with one another. He told an age bent of "self fulfillment" that true human fulfillment only comes from giving ourselves in love to God and to one another. He called us to live a unity of life, wherein the implications of the Christian faith inform the entirety of life with no contradiction or separation.

He confronted, exposed and opposed the "culture of death", wherein the human person is treated as an instrument to be used rather than an unrepeatable gift to be received. He proposed a different way, building a new "culture of life" where every human person, at every age and stage, is recognized as having an inviolable dignity and right to life, freedom and love.

He charted a path to peace and solidarity, proclaiming to the nations that we are all our brothers' keeper and that we owe an obligation in solidarity to one another and, most especially, to the poor in all of their manifestations. He wrote of authentic freedom as a freedom "for" and not just a freedom "from", a freedom that must be bounded by truth and lived in accordance with the moral understanding of our obligation to do what is right.

He exposed what he called in his Encyclical "The Gospel of Life" the "counterfeit notion of freedom" as a raw power over others. He countered the false notion of the autonomy of the individual as the measure of a "freedom" to do whatever one wants by insisting that the path to human flourishing is communion.

He proclaimed a new and true humanism, reaffirming that we were created in the Image of God, made for communion.  He insisted that through applying the treasury of the social teaching of the Catholic Church - in our relationships with one another, in our families, in our societies, our nations and in the global community - authentic justice and freedom can actually be achieved.

Entrusted for twenty six years with the Chair of Peter, Pope John Paul II was a prophetic Pope in both word and deed. From his first encyclical letter entitled "The Redeemer of Man" to his last, the "Church of the Eucharist", he proclaimed that the truth is, as he wrote in his profound Encyclical Letter on the Moral Life, a "splendor".

He called for reconciliation among separated Christians in "May They Be One" and a new model of full communion with the Church which is beginning to be implemented under Pope Benedict XVI with the creation of Anglican Ordinariates as an example. With deep love for the "Light of the East" he ...