Vatican City - The messages arriving in Monsignor Slawomir Oder's inbox are multiplying. A mother writes from Bloomington, Ill., appealing to John Paul II from beyond the grave to heal her daughter from a sudden brain injury. Another click away, a child has been conceived in Mexico, thanks, the e-mail says, to the late pope's intercession.
The centuries-old practice of making saints behind closed doors and beyond public scrutiny is getting a technological jolt. Barely a year has passed since John Paul's death April 2, 2005. But Oder, the leading advocate for John Paul's sainthood, must hustle to meet the demands of the Internet, where potential miracles are being reported in real time and campaigns for and against John Paul's sainthood are already in full swing.
"The Internet and media let people inside the process, and they are participating spiritually and emotionally," Oder said. "This is a novelty."
To many, the shift comes as no surprise. Just as John Paul's media savvy enlarged the papacy's presence on the world stage, the campaign for his sainthood is updating the way the faithful push for canonization.
The Rome diocese, John Paul's campaign headquarters, has launched a Web site with contact information crawling across the home page like a news flash. Message boards carry testimony, prayer intentions and donations. True to the polyglot pope's legacy, the site comes in six languages: English, Italian, French, Polish, Spanish and Portuguese.
"Twenty-seven years of technological progress helps," said the Rev. Enrico dal Covolo, the postulator, or advocate, for the sainthood of John Paul I, whose 33-day pontificate was succeeded by John Paul II's nearly 27 years in office.
Unlike his successor, Pope John Paul I does not have a Web site, nor does dal Covolo have one in the works. John Paul I's candidacy follows the traditional track for sainthood. His campaign is headquartered in the Alpine village of Belluno, where dal Covolo formerly served as a parish priest. When there is mail, it comes in envelopes.
Faithful to canonical laws dating back to 1234, John Paul I's cause waited 24 years for the Vatican to give dal Covolo the go-ahead. The push for John Paul II's sainthood, on the other hand, has been unstoppable. Weeks after his death, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the traditional five-year waiting period that stalls most candidacies.
That move appeared to come in response to public support that had been building since John Paul II's entombment beneath St. Peter's Basilica. On that day, cries of " Santo subito ," or "Sainthood now," echoed across St. Peter's Square and into the homes of a worldwide television audience.
That was the flame that lit the Internet fuse.
"I see it as a return, through the mass media, to the people," said Monsignor Kevin Irwin, a theology professor at Catholic University in Washington and a specialist in early Christian saint-making.
According to Irwin, grass-roots support was initially the engine of Catholic saint-making rather than Vatican procedure. Local "cults of sainthood" worshiped at the tombs of early Christian martyrs and enshrined their personal belongings as a way of establishing their "reputation for sainthood."
"The spontaneity is really imitative of cults of saints in the 4th century, when popular devotion made saints out of defenders of the faith," Irwin said.
In the case of John Paul II, Internet and television have replaced the physical altar place, serving as a virtual meeting ground for a cult that is distinctly global. "It's like reaping the fruits of what he sowed," Oder said.
Although the Internet has become an effective forum for John Paul's admirers, it has also given a platform to his opponents. In December, the liberal Catholic Web site Adista published a letter by dissident theologians challenging the pope's drive for sainthood, raising objections ranging from the pope's alleged mishandling of clerical sex abuse to his rejection of birth control.
Giovanni Franzoni, a former priest who wrote the letter, said the tactic was effective for getting the objectors' position on the record, but he doubted whether it would have any impact.
"They will make him a saint anyway, because there is so much momentum," Franzoni said, referring to the Vatican. "But I love my church, and I am ashamed of certain things that I prefer are said out in the open."
It is unclear whether such debates will ultimately have any effect on John Paul's campaign.
Monsignor Robert Sarno of the Vatican's saint-making department, known as the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, said that evidence of John Paul's candidacy is "not going to come from the Internet."