Pope Benedict XVI has moved Pope Paul VI closer to sainthood by acknowledging his predecessor’s “heroic virtues.”
Paul VI, who guided the Catholic Church through a tumultuous period of change in the 1960s and ’70s and is now considered venerable in the Catholic Church, needs the Vatican to recognize a miracle due to his intercession in order to be beatified, or declared blessed. Recognition of a second miracle would then elevate him to sainthood.