The Saints: Perfect People or Sinners Like Us? Who the saints are, and how they are selected as examples.
September 1999

The Saints: Sinners Like Us?

Recent news coverage on the canonization of various saints has raised many questions as to exactly who the saints are. In this first edition of Heritage in Focus, we will concentrate on the saints.

Among the recent speculation and rumors are indications that two very prominent late 20th-Century figures are expected to be canonized by the year 2000: Pope John XXIII (right) and Mother Teresa (below). If this occurs, both of these admirable Catholics will be among the fastest ever to be so recognized by the Church. In addition, recent controversies over the canonization of St. Edith Stein and the beatification of Bl. Junipero Serra, Apostle to California, have raised questions about exactly what are the qualities of a saint, and of course there is always the curiosity of how the process is undertaken.

Who is a saint?

There are so many misconceptions about the saints, that perhaps it is easiest to begin by stating what the saints are not.

The saints are not perfect people. Contrary to popular belief, saints are not the opposite of sinners. In fact, with the exception of the Blessed Mother and the angels popularly called saints, all saints were sinners. They were just sinners who tried harder than most people to pursue perfection. In fact, they just tried again and again. The saints sought perfection to such a degree that their example is called "heroically virtuous." That is, they put such effort into it that they serve as great examples of pursuing the Christian life. As such, they were often subject to various faults and even to misperceptions and common attitudes of their times. Some made theological errors, some advocated practices we would disagree with today, some may have been difficult to live with and outspoken, but all of them made great strides in some particular virtues that we would do well to imitate.

What does it mean to be a saint? When we call someone a saint, it means that we believe they are in heaven. Thus, anyone who has been saved is a saint, and in fact we honor all of them, those we have heard of, those we have lived with, and those we do not know, every year on November 1, the Feast of All Saints. Those we most commonly refer to as saints are those whose lives have been recognized by the Church with official declaration that such a person is in heaven, such as in the recent canonization of Edith Stein (right), martyred by the Nazis at Auschwitz for her Jewish heritage.

Are all the saints distant mythical figures? NO! Some we know little about. Many we do not even know what they look like. Others we have photographs of, and people still alive recall them well. Before the reign of Pope John Paul II, a canonization was a rare event, but this pope has canonized hundreds of people, more than all the previous popes combined. Many of these new saints lived in our own time and faced many of the challenges we face ourselves. A look at the liturgical calendar on the St. Victor's Web site will reveal a variety of images of the saints. Some we see in photographs, others in Old Master paintings, still others in the actual features of every race and nation, such as St. Andrew Kim Taegon, the first Korean priest and a martyr (left). In the case of Bl. Miguel Pro, a Mexican martyr of the 1920s, for example, we have actual photographs of his martyrdom from the pages of contemporary newspapers (right) . Today we have saints of every nation and color, witnesses to the faith in persecutions and everyday life in every part of the world. This is fitting for a Church which is called "Catholic," or "universal."

How does one become a saint?

Of course, the correct way to answer this is to say that one becomes a saint by following the gospel and living one's life in accordance with the Great Commandment, to love God with one's whole heart and mind and soul and to love one's neighbor as one's self. This is what we are all called to become. But we will assume you mean how one becomes canonized.

Popular acclamation. In the early days of the Church, such as at the time of our patron, St. Victor (left), saints were declared by popular acclamation. That is, the People of God would simply begin to venerate their memory and remains, and they would become ipso facto a saint. As abuses arose in this practice, the Church began to regulate who could and could not be officially venerated as a saint. There is no reason why this process could not take place today, as long as it is recognized by Rome. In fact, when Pope John XXIII died in 1963, there was an unsuccessful movement by some of the bishops present for the Second Vatican Council to popularly acclaim him a saint, and the fast-track process for the canonization of Mother Teresa has the ancient flavor of canonization by acclamation about it, although the official processes are still being followed. The canonization of St. Therese of Lisieux occured just 25 years after her death in 1897, also due to popular pressure.

Formal canonization. By about the year 973, canonization was limited to formal papal proclamation in the Western Church. Over the years, a process was developed which today has the following steps:

• The bishop of the area where the candidate lived opens an investigation in response to a formal petition. He assigns a postulator to compile a biography and to and review the candidate's writings, if any exist. Witnesses are interviewed, and a final report is sent by the bishop to Rome. At this point, the candidate is known as a Servant of God.
• If the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican agrees with the findings, the pope may declare the candidate Venerable.
• After additional signs, such as one miracle, the candidate for sainthood may be declared Blessed.
• Finally, after a requirement of three miracles, which may be waived by the pope, the candidate may be declared a saint in a formal ceremony of canonization, which usually occurs in Rome but has at times been celebrated in the home region of the new saint.

Other Churches continue the practice of recognizing heroic virtue. The Eastern Churches (Orthodox) proclaim saints both by popular acclamation and by the declaration of bishops. The Anglican (Episcopal) Church continues to add witnesses to the faith to their liturgical calendar by acts of councils of bishops. In this century, a delegation of the German Lutheran Church approached the Vatican with the request that they open formal proceedings for the canonization of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a minister martyred by the Nazis, since their Church had no formal process for canonization, but the Vatican declined the request, suggesting that the Lutherans develop their own process.

Conclusion

The saints are witnesses to the faith and models to us although they have lived in every era and nation and culture. One may ask what we can learn today from a lawyer who was Lord Chancellor of England in the 16th Century, for example, but the life of St. Thomas More (above) continues to inspire us and provide guidance for our everyday business lives in Los Angeles. Men and women, married and celibate, religious and lay, Native Americans, Africans, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Columbian, Cuban, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Vietnamese, Filipino. All have something to share with us, if we will only listen.

Further Reading

If you want to read an interesting book about the process of canonization and how an imperfect Church goes about singling out imperfect examples of heroic virtue, try Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn't, and Why, by Kenneth Woodward, the religion editor of Newsweek Magazine. Click on the image of the book to order it now.

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