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From Sydney Morning Herald:
... red cloth screens cordoned off a side chapel that will
soon draw as many visitors as Michelangelo's Pieta nearby.
Starting today, that side chapel is where the entombed
remains of Pope John Paul II will be on view for public
veneration - after Pope Benedict XVI presides over the
biggest spectacle since his own installation in 2005: a
beatification Mass that will move his adored predecessor a
step closer to sainthood.
The beatification is widely seen as a way not just to honour
John Paul but also to energise the Catholic Church after a
rough patch. Yet, like John Paul's 26-year papacy itself, it
has become intensely polarising.
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For one thing, Benedict waived the traditional five-year
wait and began the process just weeks after John Paul's
death, and critics across the Catholic spectrum have
questioned the alacrity. Others say the vast sex abuse
crisis that emerged under John Paul is grounds against
sainthood.
Defenders, however, say the beatification is simply the
formal seal of approval for a wildly popular pope who helped
bring down communism and whom many Catholics, especially in
his native Poland, already consider a saint. Hundreds of
thousands are expected in Rome, the biggest crowds since
2005, when cries of ''Santo subito'' or ''Sainthood now,''
erupted at John Paul's funeral Mass. ''This beatification is
different because this pope is different. He's a man with a
role in history, not just in church history,'' said Andrea
Riccardi, founder of liberal Catholic group the Community of
Sant'Egidio, and a biographer of John Paul.
The GCP event was set for the full 24 hour GCP day, which is
02:00 May 1st to 02:00 May 2nd local time in Rome. The
timing is arbitrary, but the attention of millions is
unquestionable. News reports estimate 1.5 million are in
Rome to attend the beatification ceremonies, and some large
part of those masses are expected to file by the exhumed
remains of this potential saint.
The result is Chisquare 86586.497 on 86400 df, for p = 0.326
and Z = 0.450.
It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny
statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish
signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be
largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of
similar analyses.
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