To this year’s canonization of two great popes—Saint Pope John Paul II and Saint Pope John XXIII—the Catholic Church has added the beatification of Paul VI, the pope who presided over the final stages of the Second Vatican Council but who is probably best known to Catholics and non-Catholics alike as the author of Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical which declares in no uncertain terms the error and evil of contraception, or artificial birth control.

Pope Francis solemnly declared his heroic predecessor “Blessed” at the conclusion of the two-week Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which the Supreme Pontiff had earlier convened to take a deeper look into the way the Church is evangelizing families around the world. The beatification followed official approval in May of a miracle attributed to Blessed Paul VI’s intercession—the healing in 2001 of an unborn child whom doctors had diagnosed to have a number of congenital defects and had expected to be born with those defects. For reasons unknown to medical experts, the baby (a boy) was born without any of those defects and has since grown up to be a healthy American teenager. At his parents’ request, his name has been withheld from publication.

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