Majority (55%) Of Canadians And Catholics (74%) Agree Pope John Paul II Should Be Named A Saint By Catholic Church

Toronto, Ontario - As Pope John Paul II is laid to rest, a new CTV/Globe and Mail poll indicates that a majority of Canadians (55% -- 74% among Catholic Canadians) agree that Pope John Paul II should be named a Saint by the Catholic Church - 34% disagree, and 11% "don't know".

The poll, which was conducted over the last 48 hours also updates previous tracking from 2003 concerning the approval of John Paul II and various attributes ascribed to him during his reign.

The most recent poll's findings indicate that strong majorities of Canadians both think Pope John Paul II will go down in history as one of the greatest Popes of all time (89%) and approved of his performance as a spiritual leader (83%).

Admiration for Pope John Paul II among a majority of Canadians is driven by several different factors, including the popularly-held beliefs that: he had been an effective champion of freedom from government oppression (83%), brought honour and true faithfulness to the Papacy of the Catholic Church (81%), helped the poor and oppressed around the world (66%), and that he brought the Catholic Church closer to the true Christian faith during his reign (65%).

As for agreement with the Pope John Paul II's pronouncements on topics such as philosophy, abortion, birth control and evangelism, more Canadians today (56%, up 9 points) agree with the Pope's pronouncements than did so in 2003 (47%) and 2002 (43%).

And when evaluating adjectives to describe Pope John Paul II, nine in ten describe him as sincere (93%, +8 points from 2003), a peacemaker (89%, +9 points), a force for good (88%, +11 points), humble (86%, +7 points), and forgiving (86%, +8 points).

However, good portions of Canadians do offer some criticisms of Pope John Paul II, specifically: that his teaching and policies alienated many Catholics from the Church (41%), and that he tried to drag the Catholic Church out of the 21st Century and back into a less enlightened past (39%).

These are the findings of an Ipsos-Reid/Globe and Mail/CTV poll conducted from April 5th, 2005 to April 6th, 2005. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 737 adult Canadians were interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the national results are considered accurate to within 1774.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to the 2001 Census data. Please open the attached PDF to view the complete factum including graphics and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

Andrew Grenville
Senior Vice-President
Ipsos-Reid
(416) 324-2900