Beatification of Pope Paul VI Beatification of Pope Paul VI The cause for the canonization of Pope Paul VI, who died in 1978, commenced in 1993 and he was canonized on October 14, 2018. After having been proclaimed a Servant of God and declared Venerable, he was beatified on 19 October 2014, after the recognition of a miracle had been attributed to his intercession, and declared a saint by Pope Francis I on October 14, 2018. The postulator of the cause is Antonio Marrazzo while the vice-postulator is Antonio Lanzoni. On 18 March 1993 "nihil obstat" ("nothing against") was declared under Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II unsuccessfully asked the country's president, Efraín Ríos Montt, to reduce the sentence for six left-wing guerrillas sentenced to death. In 2002, John Paul II again travelled to Guatemala. At that time, Guatemala was one of only two countries in Latin America (the other being Cuba) to apply capital punishment. John Paul II asked the Guatemalan president, Alfonso Portillo, for a moratorium on executions. Pope John Paul II pushed for a reference to Europe's Christian cultural roots in the draft of the European Constitution. In his 2003 apostolic exhortation "Ecclesia in Europa", John Paul II wrote that he "fully (respected) the