Saints

The Vatican on Monday issued new guidelines aimed at making it more difficult to become a saint. The tougher standards follow the papacy of the late John Paul II, who set a record pace in nominating candidates for sainthood. Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, who heads the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, said in a news conference that local bishops who investigate potential saints must work with "greater sobriety and rigor" to build a candidate's case.

Soon after he died two years ago, Pope John Paul II was practically declared a saint by \o7vox populi\f7. Banners demanding "Santo Subito!" (Sainthood Now!) crowned the crowds of people who filled St. Peter's Square to mourn the pontiff. Today, on the second anniversary of his death, John Paul will take a significant step closer to sainthood.

Pope Benedict XVI on Friday gave this enormous Roman Catholic country its first native-born saint, canonizing a Franciscan monk credited with providing thousands of miracle cures. The pope also used the occasion to remind followers to live their lives like saints, exhorting the faithful to resist popular media that glamorize sex and ridicule virginity. "The world needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds that refuse to be perceived as mere objects of pleasure," he said.

When J. Michael Walker first visited Santa Clara Street, he felt a twinge of disappointment. "There's nothing here," he thought as he scanned the two-block street in southeast Los Angeles, hemmed in by red-brick walls, barbed wire and railroad tracks. Where could he find St. Clare? Then he understood. Santa Clara Street lay at the heart of a threadbare industrial zone. Its windowless warehouses and boarded-up factories were coated with truck dust, its streets empty of people. Similarly, St.

Several thousand Vietnamese American Roman Catholics turned an Irvine arena into a makeshift church Sunday for a service commemorating the struggle and sacrifice of their martyred ancestors in Vietnam more than two centuries ago. The bilingual ceremony at UC Irvine's Bren Events Center mixed ancient Catholic rites with Vietnamese-inspired dance, music and theater to recount the story of 117 martyrs slain during the persecution of Catholics in Vietnam between 1798 and 1861.

Hundreds of worshipers lined up in St. Mary of the Woods to touch the coffin holding the remains of a 19th century Roman Catholic nun whom Pope Benedict XVI plans to canonize Oct. 15. The body of Mother Theodore Guerin was carried to a shrine near the altar at the Church of the Immaculate Conception on the grounds of the school she founded as a French missionary to the American frontier. Her remains had been in a crypt beneath the church's floor.

A Mexican bishop who worked clandestinely in order to elude execution and a French-born nun who was a missionary in the 19th century American wilderness were elevated to sainthood Sunday in a regal ceremony presided over by Pope Benedict XVI. Thousands of pilgrims from Mexican villages, U.S. cities and elsewhere crowded into St. Peter's Square to salute the naming of four Roman Catholic saints, the second canonization that Benedict has performed in his 18-month papacy.

In an event that mixed moments of sadness and exuberance, Roman Catholic members of the Vietnamese American community gathered Sunday to remember the difficult origins of their faith and celebrate their current triumphs. Nearly 5,000 people arrived at the UC Irvine Bren Events Center for the annual Mass celebrating the Vietnamese martyrs. The 117 martyrs, canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988, were killed during the persecution of Catholics in Vietnam from 1798 until 1861.

After three real estate agents, two price reductions and nearly a year with no offers on their town house in Las Vegas, George and Katherine Grodin turned to a higher power for help. They bought a 4-inch plastic figurine of St. Joseph -- the patron saint of home and employment -- and placed it upside down in their patio with hopes of breaking their home-selling slump. "I just felt so helpless," said Katherine Grodin, 47. "I needed to do something."

In a basement at Old Mission Santa Barbara, a filing cabinet is thick with claims of miracles that didn't make the grade. A man falls off his horse and, thanks to Junipero Serra, he gets up unscathed. A woman visits Serra's tomb in Carmel and something stirs her deeply, changing the course of her life. An alcoholic gives up drinking and credits Serra for seeing him through. They all believed their experiences to be miraculous -- but none was deemed the miracle needed to lift Serra into sainthood, a goal church officials announced 75 years ago Thursday, the 225th anniversary of his death.