Becoming a Saint

Praise and thanksgiving to God for having raised up in
the Church a great multitude of saints, whom no one could count. A great
multitude: not only the saints and blessed we honor during the liturgical year,
but also the anonymous saints known only to Him. Mothers and fathers of
families, who in their daily devotion to their children made an effective
contribution to the Church’s growth and to the building of society; priests,
sisters, and lay people who, like candles lit before the altar of the Lord,
were consumed in offering material and spiritual aid to their neighbor in need;
men and women missionaries, who left everything to bring the Gospel message to
every part of the world. And the list could go on.

St. Pope John Paul, November 1, 2001

Simply put, saints are holy and virtuous men and women whose lives were filled in service to the Lord. However, prior to the papacy of John Paul II, it was difficult to attain saintly status. Pope John Paul II created the most saints of any pope in the church’s history, canonizing 482 people. Pope Francis has canonized 892 people so far, although 813 of this number were a single group of Italian martyrs who were killed in the 13th century for refusing to convert to Islam.

For centuries, consideration for the sainthood required that a Servant of God heroically lived a life of Christian virtues or had been martyred for the faith. The third, less common way, is called an equivalent or equipollent canonization: when there is evidence of strong devotion among the faithful to a holy man or woman, the pope can waive a lengthy formal canonical investigation and can authorize their veneration as saints, such as where someone has been venerated as a holy person from ancient times and this is taken as evidence of saintliness.

Pope Francis announced another pathway in 2017, as an outcome of many years of discussion among the Congregation of the Causes of Saints. This fourth criteria to sainthood is to give up one’s life in a heroic act of loving service to others. According to Archbishop Marcello Bartolucci, secretary of the Congregation for Causes, the addition is meant “to promote heroic Christian testimony, (that has been) up to now without a specific process, precisely because it did not completely fit within the case of martyrdom or heroic virtues.” According to the apostolic letter and reported by Catholic News Service, any causes for beatification according to the new pathway of “offering of life” would have to meet the following criteria:

“Free and willing offer of one’s life and a heroic acceptance, out of love, of a certain and early death; the heroic act of charity and the premature death are connected.
Evidence of having lived out the Christian virtues — at least in an ordinary, and not necessarily heroic, way — before having offered one’s life to others and until one’s death.
Evidence of a reputation for holiness, at least after death.
A miracle attributed to the candidate’s intercession is needed for beatification.”

Archbishop Bartolucci has said the new provisions do nothing to change the Church’s views on holiness leading to sainthood and the traditional procedure for beatification. The new provision offers “enrichment” with “new horizons and opportunities for the edification of the people of God, who, in their saints, see the face of Christ, the presence of God in history and the exemplary implementation of the Gospel.”

For information on the traditional methods of becoming a saint, please click here.