Blessed John Paul II - Part I

Copyright (c) 2011 Bob and Penny Lord's Site

This is the Year of John Paul II

This must be the Year of the Eucharist

Family, we are very excited about this year. Pope John Paul II, or Pope John Paul the Great, will be beatified on May 1, in St. Peter's Square. If the predictions hold true that 700,000 Polish pilgrims will descend on the Holy City for that occasion, it will be the greatest and largest event our Church has ever experienced.

We were present for the Beatification of Padre Pio. It was truly a sight to behold. We didn't dare try to buck the crowds for his Canonization. We have friends who did go, and they couldn't get within two blocks of St. Peter's Square. For the viewing and funeral of Pope John Paul, we don't even want to speculate on how many faithful waited on line for a mini-second glimpse of our fallen leader. We recall videos on Fox News and EWTN of lines of people waiting all day and through the night to say their goodbyes to the Pope. And so we are looking forward to a great celebration on the life and sanctity of our John Paul the Great.

But there's so much more to it than the spectacular tribute which will be given him. The legacy he left us is being felt all over the country; I'm sure it's being felt all over the world. In our Ministry, even before the announcement of the Beatification was made official by the Vatican, we began to experience a great resurgence of interest in the Eucharist. We received a great deal of requests for our books and videos on the Eucharist. As far back as last summer, we began getting requests to give talks, days of recollection, conferences and retreats on the Eucharist through this year and into 2012. We would not have thought that unusual ten or fifteen years ago. We were known as the go-to-people for information on the Eucharist, especially Miracles of the Eucharist. We had pioneered interest in the Miracles of the Eucharist since 1976, when we first visited the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano. All through the 70's and 80's, we researched Miracles of the Eucharist throughout Europe. We wrote our first book on Miracles of the Eucharist in 1986. We made our first television series for Mother Angelica on the Miracles of the Eucharist in 1987. It was all done in studio at EWTN in Birmingham, Alabama, and ran on that format for many years. But the clamor to actually see the places of the Miracles and make on-site programs gave us the incentive to go overseas to the shrines, and make on-site documentaries of the Miracles of the Eucharist, which are being shown to this day on EWTN.


------

Bob and Penny Lord are renowned Catholic authors and television hosts on EWTN, Global Catholic television. They are prolific writers about the Cat. For more information about Pope John Paul II go to http://www.bobandpennylord.com