Weigel said he had devoted some 15 years of his life to researching his two major biographies of the Polish pontiff. What impressed him, he said, was that the pope was an "utterly normal human being" who made himself completely open to the work of the Holy Spirit.

In that sense, Weigel said, the holiness that's being recognized at his beatification is something accessible to all Christians. Throughout his life, he said, Pope John Paul was trying to figure out what God was doing in his life and in the world, and to respond accordingly.

"I think everything he did, as a literary man, as a philosopher, as a priest, a bishop, a statesman, a pope, grew out of his radical Christian discipleship," he said.

"Very few of the billion Catholics in the world are going to have the range of talents that Karol Wojtyla had. Every baptized person has the opportunity to live a life of radical discipleship. And that's our connection to him."

Weigel noted that being a saint is not about perfection.

"It's about living one's life with the intention to do the right thing and making decisions based on one's best judgment, without fear or favour. No pope gets everything right. John Paul II didn't get everything right, he would be the first to admit it," he said.

Some have questioned Pope John Paul's beatification, saying he responded inadequately to priestly sex abuse cases that came to light late in his pontificate. Weigel said that criticism is off the mark.

"The way to think about John Paul II and the priesthood is to recognize that he was a great reformer of the priesthood. The priesthood was in terrible shape in 1978 when he became pope; it was in remarkably better shape 26 years later. That's the context," he said.

"The pope, like frankly the rest of the Vatican, took too long in 2002 to find out what was really going on in the United States. But once he found out, he acted in a decisive way."