Spanish diocese receives relic of the smiling Pope, Blessed John Paul I

The chapel of the Juan Pablo I Senior Residence, located in the Diocese of Vitoria (Spain), has for a few days now had a second-degree relic of the so-called “Pope of the Smile” who ruled the Catholic Church for 33 days in 1978.

Shortly after his death, a residence for the care of elderly people run by the Servants of Jesus, a congregation founded by Saint María Josefa del Corazón de Jesús in 1871, was inaugurated in the Alava city of Vitoria.

As a tribute and memory of the brief pontificate of the former Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Albino Luciani, the congregation decided to name the new installation after the Pope.

The relic that has reached this residence is a piece of one of the pontiff’s vestments, therefore, it is considered second grade. It is contained in a reliquary that was enthroned within the framework of a Eucharistic celebration presided over by the diocesan priest Rafael Sánchez.

John Paul I governed the Church between August 26 and September 28, 1978, a brief pontificate in which he held four General Audiences, presided over the recitation of the Angelus on five occasions, gave two public homilies and nine official speeches.

The choice of his pontificate name responds to Cardinal Luciani’s desire to pay tribute to his two predecessors: Saint John XXIII and Saint Paul VI.

On September 29, 1978, at the age of 65, he was found dead in his bed. The doctor Renato Buzzoneti explained that he had died due to a heart attack.

Pope Francis beatified John Paul I on September 4, 2022. The decree of his beatification was published on October 13, 2021 and it recognized the intercession of the Pope of Smile in the healing of the 10-year-old Argentine girl Candela Giardia who suffered from febrile infection epilepsy syndrome, a rare disease that usually has an irremediably fatal diagnosis.