ABOUT SAINTHOOD
The long road
For hundreds of years in the church’s early history, saints were chosen by public acclaim. Pope John XV led the first canonization in 993, making Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg a saint. Ulrich made daily visits to a hospital in Augsburg to wash the feet of poor people. The Catholic church eventually developed a long and complicated process, which sometimes spanned centuries, to determine who deserves sainthood. The church first formalized its rules for naming saints after the 16th-century Council of Trent.
The short road
In 1983, Pope John Paul II, eager to give his church more role models, overhauled the process. The following steps are now taken down the formal path to sainthood.
•"Venerable" What a pope proclaims a candidate to be after a local church investigation of the potential saint's life and writings looks carefully to see if there are "heroic" virtues and orthodoxy of doctrine. If a panel of theologians and cardinals at the Vatican give their seal of approval, the candidate becomes venerable.
• "Blessed" A title bestowed upon beatification, requires evidence of one miracle, except for martyrs, where the miracle must happen after the candidate has died as a result of a specific plea to the martyr.
• "Saints" After reports of a second miracle (or a first miracle in the case of a martyr), are verified on various levels, including at the Vatican, the pope signs off with his approval and candidates are "canonized," or made saints.
Some firsts
• First martyr Saint Stephen, whose feast day is celebrated on Dec. 26. He was stoned to death for being a Christian.
• First pope the church recognized as a saint The first pope, Peter.
Most saints
By the end of his long papacy, in 2005, John Paul had recognized 480 saints. That compares to 302 saints who were named during all the papacies of the previous 500 years.
The fast track
A successful sainthood lobby for John Paul II, and a populist call that rose up saw him beatified six years after his death in 2005. Another on the “fast-track” was Mother Teresa. John Paul, a supporter of the nun who toiled in India for the poor and died in 1997, waived the normal five-year waiting period for her beatification processes to begin. She was beatified in 2003, although her cause for canonization still awaits another possible miracle to be certified for sainthood. With Francis making the poor a priority of his papacy, Mother Teresa’s cause might get a big boost.
Pope Francis on Friday cleared two of the 20th century’s most influential popes to become saints, approving a miracle needed to canonize Pope John Paul II and waiving Vatican rules to honor Pope John XXIII.
It was a remarkable show of papal authority and confirmed Francis’ willingness to bend church tradition when it comes to things he cares deeply about. Both popes are also closely identified with the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the Catholic Church into modern times, an indication that Francis clearly wants to make a statement about the council’s role in shaping the church today.
Francis approved a decree that a Costa Rican woman’s inexplicable cure from a deadly brain aneurysm was the “miracle” needed to canonize John Paul, who was pope from 1978-2005. More significantly, he decided that John XXIII, who convened Vatican II, could be declared a saint even without a second miracle attributed to his intercession. The Vatican said Francis had the power to dispense with such requirements and could proceed with only one confirmed miracle to John’s name.
The ceremony is expected before the end of the year. The date of Dec. 8 has been floated as likely, given it’s the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a major feast day for the church that honors Mary, to whom both saintly popes were particularly devoted. Polish prelates continue to press for October, to mark the 35th anniversary of the Polish-born John Paul’s election, but Vatican officials have suggested that’s too soon to organize such a massive event.
The announcement came on a remarkable day: It opened with Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI attending their first Vatican ceremony together, sitting side-by-side on matching papal chairs for the unveiling of a statue in the Vatican gardens. It continued with the publication of Francis’ first encyclical, a meditation on faith that was largely written by Benedict before he retired but was signed by Francis. And it climaxed with Francis’ decision to canonize two other predecessors.
Each event was historic in its own rite. But the canonization announcement capped them all, reflecting the priorities of this unique pontificate that has already broken so many rules and traditions, from Francis’ decision to shun papal vestments to his housing arrangements, living in the Vatican hotel rather than the stuffy Apostolic Palace.
Francis will set the canonization date at an upcoming meeting of cardinals.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed that the miracle that brought John Paul to the ranks of saints concerned a Costa Rican woman, Floribeth Mora, who on Friday broke months of silence to tell her story in public, surrounded by her family, doctors and church officials at a news conference in the archbishop’s residence in San Jose, Costa Rica.
A tearful Mora described how she awoke at her home on April 8, 2011, with a debilitating headache that sent her to the hospital. She was later diagnosed with having suffered a cerebral aneurysm in the right side of her brain. Doctors decided they couldn’t operate because the area was inaccessible, and she was sent home with painkillers.
A few days later, after Mora’s family decided to build a shrine to John Paul outside their home, they were shocked to see her get out of bed. It was the same day John Paul was beatified, May 1, 2011. Medical tests later confirmed that the aneurysm had disappeared.
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