Sainthood Not Just for Italians Anymore

September 14, 2015 8:13 AM

So you want to be a saint?

The Washington Post's Kevin Uhrmacher breaks down the requirements and the odds for being canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. The good news is that you don't have to be martyred, as long as you live a life of "heroic virtue" and have an extra miracle attributed to you. This alternate route, known as being a "confessor", has skyrocketed in the 21st Century, with more confessor saints being made in the last 15 years than in the 18th and 19th Centuries combined (and at a pace that will dwarf the 20th Century as well).

The bad news is you still have to die. And be Catholic. But at least you can still be canonized over the strenuous objections of the descendants of the people the Church claims you served.

Pope Francis will visit the U.S. next week to canonize Junipero Serra, meet with President Obama, speak to a joint session of Congress (which is 30 percent Catholic, compared to 22 percent of Americans overall), address the United Nations General Assembly, and make various other popely visits. The Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has said that at least one threat against the visit has been "disrupted".

posted by Etrigan (18 comments total)

NPR had a particularly interesting story on Junipero Serra, in an interview with Vincent Medina and Andrew Galvan, two descendants of "Mission Indians" who have shared ancestry, and work together at Mission San Francisco de Asís, or Mission Dolores. Both are practicing Catholics, but Medina, assistant museum director, sees Serra as a reason the Ohlone people have lost so much of their heritage, while Galvan, museum director, sees Serra as a saint already.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:41 AM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Still have to die? But I want to be a saint nowww!
posted by sexyrobot at 8:42 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

There's another nuance to the whole "how do you become a saint" thing, which ties into "what is a saint in the first place."

Technically - according to what I learned in my confirmation class, about 30 years ago - a saint is "anyone who got into heaven." My grandma could be a saint. But the Vatican doesn't officially declare that this is definitively the case of everyone who dies because - who the heck knows what my grandma thought in her secret heart of hearts; my grandma could be a saint, but she also might not. She may have done some stuff before she met grandpa that no one knows about. So there's a possibility she's working that stuff off in Purgatory and isn't in heaven yet.

So a saint isn't, like, a spirit who's gotten a pay raise; they're already a saint by virtue of being in heaven. Instead, the canonization is more like the Vatican's publicly declaring that "okay, we think it is a safe bet to assume that this person did get into heaven." That's why the virtuous life and the miracles stuff comes into play - it's not what makes you a saint, it is what causes the Vatican to regard you as a safe bet.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:44 AM on September 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

This alternate route, known as being a "confessor", has skyrocketed in the 21st Century, with more confessor saints being made in the last 15 years than in the 18th and 19th Centuries combined (and at a pace that will dwarf the 20th Century as well).

Several thousands of them were just Catholics who were killed in the Spanish Civil War. And no disrespect for them, but when the teachers and random socialist peasants who were murdered by the fascist death squads are still in unmarked roadside grave pits with the Partido Popular still trying their hardest to to keep them that way, that sort of thing stings.

So, well, I feel for the Native Americans of California. But since the Church has been making saints out of Jew-hunting inquisitors and fascist cult-founding assholes for a long time, I can't summon too much outrage. We have much worse saints.
posted by sukeban at 9:20 AM on September 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

"Popely"? Papal is a perfectly good word.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:25 AM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Another benefit of the Episcopal Church: they don't require their saints to be Episcopal (or even Anglican). Thus you will find Martin Luther King, Jr. (Baptist) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Lutheran) alongside the expected array of Catholics and Anglicans on the Calendar of Saints.
posted by 1367 at 9:53 AM on September 14, 2015

But since the Church has been making saints out of Jew-hunting inquisitors and fascist cult-founding assholes for a long time, I can't summon too much outrage.

Can the Pope de-saintify someone? If not, the Pope could at least stop honoring dead men who facilitated the subjugation of native people. And "he was a product of his time" is a shitty reason to write off his mis-deeds. Times don't magically change on their own, they change because people stop doing those bad things. And honoring such people could be classified as a bad thing, in my eyes.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:44 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't believe de-canonization is an actual thing, no. The prevailing consensus is that canonizations are infallible. Wiki:

Although a recognition of sainthood by the Pope does not directly concern a fact of divine revelation, it must still be "definitively held" by the faithful as infallible under (at the very least) the Universal Magisterium of the Church since it is a truth connected to revelation by historical necessity.

As normal with such matters, things are more complex than that, see this interview, for example.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:05 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Popely"? Papal is a perfectly good word.

"Popely" is a perfectly pope-ulent word.
posted by Cookiebastard at 11:09 AM on September 14, 2015 [8 favorites]

Can the Pope de-saintify someone?

Some thirty-odd medieval saints were taken from the calendar during the Second Vatican Council for a distinctive lack of evidence of their existence. They range from the very famous (like St George and St Valentine) to the just embarrassing (like, to quote another local saint, Dominguito de Val, who despite being totally imaginary was cruelly martyred by the evil Jews in a plagiarized version of the story of William of Norwich). But you can imagine how little people care that St George isn't considered a real person nowadays. Dominguito de Val is still the patron saint of the choirboys of El Pilar and has a chapel dedicated to him in the other cathedral, like Pedro Arbués.
posted by sukeban at 11:12 AM on September 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Vatican II reforms removed a number of saints from the liturgical calendar, it did not remove their status as saints.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:20 AM on September 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Popely" is a perfectly pope-ulent word.

Indeed, "popely" is perhaps the most pope-ulent word.
posted by The Tensor at 11:23 AM on September 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

pope.ly is the Vatican's hip new domain where you can hang out with the pontiff, perhaps even share a virtual PSL. Hadn't you heard?
posted by scruss at 11:29 AM on September 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

There is an excellent book on the whole process, called (appropriately enough) Making Saints. It looks indepth at the process of beatifying and/or canonising several 20th century martyrs and saints.
posted by jb at 1:10 PM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Physical Phenonomena of Mysticism by Herbert Thurston is a great book with a horrible title. A much more accurate title would be something like "Testimony regarding miracles for Catholic saint candidates." It is one of the best resources for anybody investigating the paranormal. The Devil's Advocate is an official position; it is a prosecutor working for the Vatican whose job is to find the holes in arguments regarding saintly miracles. They keep careful records. Thurston gleaned these records for categories, trends, &c.

Most of the miracles of your modern saints are some dreadfully ill person prayed to them and the doctors say they miraculously recovered. This is how Pope John Paul II and Mother Theresa make the cut.

My absolute favorite saint: St. John of Capistrano. He flew! Very meticulously documented as the critics on his case were hard core anti.
posted by bukvich at 3:10 PM on September 14, 2015

My absolute favorite saint: St. John of Capistrano. He flew!

He's not my favorite saint, but my favorite saint's miracle story belongs to St. Lawrence; his martyrdom has a gloriously Monty-Python detail. He was a Christian in ancient Rome and they sentenced him to be roasted to death over a bed of hot coals, and about 15 minutes after they threw him on the coals, he called up to the guards who were standing around keeping watch: "Hey, I'm done on this side, you can turn me over."

My actual favorite saint was one of those cases where the early church took a pre-Christian deity and canonized them (that happened a lot in the early church); in the case of the early Irish Church, the saints they got that way were all still kind of feisty. St. Brigid was maybe kinda sorta the canonization of the Celtic goddess Brigid, who was sort of akin to Athena (she was the goddess of poetry, blacksmithing, arts and crafts, cattle, and she was a herald of spring); stories about the human Brigid (if there was one) say that she was the mother superior to a convent, and she was a bit of a feminist bad-ass as well. And the main prayer attributed to her isn't this grand baroque fawning-admiration thing - the upshot of her prayer is, "y'know, sometimes I wish I could buy God a beer."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:56 PM on September 14, 2015

I note that the schedule for the papal visit does not include a visit to California -- I can't help but think that local anger about Serra's "elevation to the altar" must be part of the reasoning behind that. And as someone who studies saints, sainthood, and writing about saints for a living, I'm very grateful for this post and will be watching these developments with much interest.
posted by pleasant_confusion at 9:52 PM on September 14, 2015

I'm a saint in the Universal Life Church. Normally, you have to pony up $5, but I'd sent for pastoral credentials, and they were out at the time, so I was given a certificate of sainthood instead. Suitable for framing.
posted by bryon at 10:48 PM on September 14, 2015