(CNS/Reuters)

According to the Italian daily La Stampa, John Paul II will be beatified on April 2, 2010 — the fifth anniversary of his death.

Reporter Giacomo Galeazzi reports that thanks to an acceleration in the beatification process, documents pertaining to John Paul’s cause, called the “positio,” have already been forwarded by a commission of theologians to be examined by cardinals .

“This is very good news,” says Msgr. Tadeusz Pieronek, the Polish priest who has been responsible for the diocesan phase of the beatification process in Krakow, La Stampa reported.

La Stampa adds that in early March, John Paul II’s former secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, said that the beatification process would be “finished in a few months.”

According to Cardinal Dziwisz, Pope Benedict XVI “wants to close the cause as soon as it is practical — the world demands it.”

La Stampa’s Galeazzi reports that in the last ten days the work of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints has undergone “a marked acceleration,” and consequently the late Pope will be proclaimed Blessed “earlier than expected.” He writes that only “new and unforeseen elements” could delay it.

The Vatican has neither officially confirmed or denied the news, which originated in the Polish media.

Pope Benedict XVI opened John Paul II’s beatification process soon after becoming Pope, and waived the rule that causes should not be investigated until five years after a candidate’s death. At the end of the diocesan phase, a miracle was discovered of a French nun, allegedly cured of Parkinson’s disease after praying to John Paul II.

However, not everyone at the Vatican is happy that John Paul II’s cause is proceeding so swiftly, mainly because there is still much the Church hasn’t been able to investigate about him. And the critics argue that the Church won’t know these details for some time because certain documents will be kept locked in the Vatican archives for many years to come.

“If the Vatican moves too quickly, it will be in danger of beatifying a personality rather than the person himself,” cautioned one official to the Register.

Still, those who worked with John Paul have little doubt about his sanctity.

“For me, John Paul II is a saint,” the former prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, has said.

— Edward Pentin