text: I admire Albino Luciani as much as anybody, but come on. Are we canonizing people now based on what they might have done but didn't get the opportunity to do?
  
  The appeal of John Paul I is that his unfulfilled papacy is a blank slate that anybody can project their own hopes and wishes on to. The truth is, we have no idea what he would have done had he lived. He might have been a great reformer or he might have succumbed to the management of the Curia. Who knows?
  
  John Paul I seems to have lived a life of gentle virtue, but so do millions of other Christians. Unless his having been elected pope is itself enough to elevate him to formal recognition, why set him apart for canonization?
  
  To me, this smacks of trying to set a precedent more than anything having to do with Luciani himself. Is that how it's to be going forward? Is every pope now to get sainthood as a kind of posthumous job perk?