'Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent," George Orwell said. The Vatican lately seems to share Orwell's skepticism.
Pope Benedict XVI has made no secret of his disdain for the high volume of saints named by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005. John Paul II conducted 482 canonizations, naming more saints in 26 years than his predecessors had canonized in the previous four centuries.
Since becoming pope, Benedict has stopped attending the elaborate beatification ceremonies in St. Peter's Square, the last step before canonization, and has issued a call for "greater sobriety and rigor" in the process. Last week, he replaced the leader of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, an office that fully supported John Paul's active saint-making philosophy. Vatican-watchers expect the new leader, Archbishop Angelo Amato, to throw more wrenches in the saint-making machinery.
So who need saints, anyway? That's a question I take personally. A long-lapsed Catholic, I was, for most of my life, ignorant of how and why the church names saints. But a few years ago, I learned of a blood relative, Padre Gaetano Catanoso, my grandfather's cousin, whom John Paul II had put on a path to sainthood in 1980. Padre Gaetano was canonized in 2005.
A Catanoso saint? Was this a joke? Intrigued, I decided to look into it further. I met with Vatican priests and interviewed relatives in the south of Italy for whom my distant cousin remains a powerful spiritual touchstone. In the process of finding out about my relative, I learned plenty about why John Paul was so intent on making saints.
The canonization process, John Paul believed, had become too bogged down in bureaucracy, too exacting, too detached from ordinary worshipers. So he encouraged archbishops to suggest candidates for sainthood from parishes around the world. He wanted local heroes in modern times, people whose real-life stories would serve to uplift the faithful, inspire the skeptical and lure back the drifters.
In 1983, John Paul eliminated the "office of the devil's advocate," which often held things up for decades, if not centuries. And he reduced the number of miracles needed for canonization from four to two. These changes expedited the process for many, including Padre Gaetano, a simple parish priest.
