Pope Francis marked the end of a spirited gathering of Catholic bishops in Rome by beatifying the pope who started the Synod of Bishops, Paul VI. Pope Paul VI, elected in 1963, presided over the last part of the Vatican II council and over his 15-year reign implemented many of its momentous reforms to the Catholic Church. He is not as popular as either Pope John XXIII, who launched Vatican II, or Pope John Paul II, both of whom Francis canonized earlier this year.
You need one miracle for beatification — the first step toward possible sainthood — and the one attributed to Paul VI was the survival of a California boy (now a healthy teenager) who was supposed to have been born with serious birth defects.
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