Montreal, Canada, Apr 5, 2005 / 22:00 pm
The Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus believes that the universal Church will one day canonize Pope John Paul II, who died April 2 after a 26-year pontificate.
“He was a man of great spiritual strength, great holiness,” Anderson said in an interview. “In think historians one day will call him John Paul the Great, and one day Catholics will call him St. John Paul.”
Anderson was in Montreal April 2 for a banquet in honor of Jean Vanier, the recipient of the Knights’ Gaudium et Spes Award. Only hours earlier, the world received the news that the Pope had died.
“It is a day of tremendous sadness, mostly for us,” Anderson said. “For him, he was always a man of faith, a man of hope. He spoke of crossing the threshold of hope and that’s what he did today. So those of us who have been praying for him these many days, I think many of us will begin praying to him, for his intercession and for his help.”