How is it determined?

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heathernoel

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That a Pope’s Body is not corrupt? Will the Great John Paul II be exhumed to determine if His body is corrupt?

I don’t mean to be macabre, but I just spent time surfing St. Peter’s basilica with a new found appreciation for what my humanities teachers tried to teach me about this treasure.

Would he be considered corrupt considering our embalming methods today?

TIA, and peace be with you!

Heather 🙂
 
heathernoel said:
That a Pope’s Body is not corrupt? Will the Great John Paul II be exhumed to determine if His body is corrupt?

I don’t mean to be macabre, but I just spent time surfing St. Peter’s basilica with a new found appreciation for what my humanities teachers tried to teach me about this treasure.

Would he be considered corrupt considering our embalming methods today?

TIA, and peace be with you!

Heather 🙂
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I don’t think they exhume the body just to see if it’s corrupt or not. I believe they exhume it to identify it to make sure the right person is buried there, or that there IS a body( in past times grave-robbing was quite common) or they also may want to move it to another place for veneration. Whether a body is incorrupt or not does not affect whether the person will be canonized. Embalming does not mean the body will not deteriorate, the rate of that also is determined by the conditions where the body is interred and the conditions of the coffin ,such as water seeping into it, the temperature and humidity, etc. So you can have an embalmed body that is incorrupt or corrupt. There have been cases of saints who initially were found to be incorrupt, but whose bodies became corrupt after exhumation and moving them to another place, and then there are those who remained incorrupt. Some they exhumed and found them to be incorrupt and reburied them, only to find them corrupted in a later exhumation. They will probably just make note of the condition of the Pope’s body, but it is not going to affect whether he is canonized or not.
 
Thanks for the information! My daughters and I were surfing around and we started talking about this…I wanted to be sure I had the right information.
 
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