Saluting a saint-maker
Funeral museum celebrates life, death and miracles of Pope John Paul II
By the time Pope John Paul II died during the 27th year of his papacy in 2005, this son of a Polish military officer had canonized 483 Catholic saints — more than all of his predecessors combined had done in 500 years.
In life, Karol Wojtyla battled communism and bettered the church’s relationships with other faiths; in death, Vatican leaders determined, he miraculously cured two desperately ill women.
On April 27, 2014, the saint-maker himself became a saint in Vatican ceremonies. Pope John Paul XXIII, who served from 1958 to 1963, also was canonized.
More than 500,000 attended the event; as many as 300,000 more watched on video screens situated around Rome. Now in Houston — more than 5,000 miles from St. Peter’s Basilica — the historic event is being celebrated by the city’s quirkiest museum, the National Museum of Funeral History.
Featuring a 1980s pope mobile and other artifacts from John Paul II’s tenure as pope, “The Making of a Saint,” joins the museum’s standing exhibit, “Celebrating the Lives and Deaths of the Popes,” which traces church history to Christianity’s beginnings.
Included in the exhibit, which occupies 5,000 square feet at the museum’s north Houston campus, are a papal sash, skullcaps and shoes, the latter fashioned from eye-catching red Moroccan leather.
Also on view are newspapers documenting the canonization of both popes and meticulous reproductions of John Paul’s papal ring and coffin.
“We have a very large Catho-
Houston’s National Museum of Funeral History has expanded its papal lives exhibit with documentation of the canonization of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII. Where: 415 Barren Springs When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays, noon-5 p.m. Sundays Admission: $7-$10; 281-876-3063, nmfh.org