Religion: Pius XII, 1876-1958

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Among the crowds that watched the motor hearse go by, there was already talk that some day Pope Pius XII may be canonized a saint. Several instances have been reported of unusual healing at his touch or prayer. Weight will be added to the arguments for his canonization by his reported vision of Jesus Christ just before his serious illness four years ago and his reported visions of the sun revolving in the sky (as it did to announce the famed apparition of the Virgin to three shepherd children of Fatima, Portugal, in 1917). But whatever future learned tribunals may decide about his saintliness, millions who saw him or heard his words will require no visions, no miracles beyond the fact that Pius XII was able to make a tormented world feel "the attraction of Christian goodness."