Never one to shrink from criticism, Pope John Paul is again putting controversial figures on the road to sainthood, including Austria's last emperor and a mystic nun who inspired Mel Gibson's film on Christ's passion.
With Sunday's ceremony in St Peter's Square, the ailing 84-year-old Roman Catholic leader will have beatified some 1,340 people, more than all his predecessors combined.
The Pope will confer beatification -- the last step before Roman Catholic sainthood -- on five people on Sunday. The two most controversial could not have been more different.
One was born in a wooden farmhouse with no running water and the other in a castle. But both have ignited as much passion after death as they did in life.
Anne Catherine Emmerick, a sickly German mystic nun who lived from 1774 to 1824, has been called "Mel's Muse." It was her book, "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ," that gave Gibson some of the most grisly details.
Although Gibson said his hit film "The Passion of the Christ" was true to the Gospels, he clearly turned to what the "Maid of Muenster" saw while gripped in visionary ecstasy.
The episode where Mary mops up her son's blood after his sadistic scourging is pure Emmerick. No Gospel mentions a hooded devil inciting Jews as they demanded Christ's crucifixion or following him as he carried his cross.
Jewish groups condemned the film, saying it would spur new forms of visceral anti-Semitism. They now fear that moving Emmerick closer to the glories of the altars, as sainthood is known, will only make matters worse.
"I think the timing of this is unfortunate and particularly damaging," said Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of inter-faith activities for the Anti-Defamation League.
"Had this happened 5 or 10 years ago, only those in the know would have noticed. But now, after Gibson's film, Emmerick's anti-Semitic writings have spread to a much wider audience," he told Reuters by telephone from New York.
Some Jewish leaders say the film and Emmerick's new popularity may resurrect deicide charges against Jews which were officially repudiated by the Second Vatican Council in 1965.
But others say accusing the Vatican can be counterproductive for the long-term good of Catholic Jewish relations.
"While we are concerned that the beatification of Emmerick may be misinterpreted, it is not the business of the Jewish community to tell the Catholic Church who its saints are," Rabbi David Rosen, who is in charge of interfaith relations for the American Jewish Committee, told Reuters from Jerusalem.
SAINTLY WARRIOR?
The beatification of Karl I, last emperor of the Austro- Hungarian Empire, has caused an uproar in Vienna, with critics denouncing him for his army's use of poison gas during World War One or lampooning him as "the patron saint of losers."
It has also opened the Austrian Church, which has been rocked by a homosexual scandal at a seminary near Vienna, to public ridicule for saying he performed a miracle by healing a Brazilian nun of her varicose veins and leg sores.
Karl, a devout Catholic who mounted the throne in 1916, made futile efforts the following year for peace talks with France and died in exile in 1922.
His defenders stress how he tried to lessen the burden of the war for soldiers and civilians by recalling from the front fathers who had lost sons and banning bombing raids on cities.
Detractors counter that the Austrian army under his command, which fought alongside Germany, used poison gas in the war.
"He was not an especially bad character, but no model figure either," said Austrian political scientist Anton Pelinka, who called the event "a beatification bordering on the absurd."