What Is a Saint? Recognition, Not Promotion

The Catholic procedure was substantially reorganised in 1983 and runs in stages, each with a title:

• •A local bishop opens an inquiry, normally not before five years after death, examining the person's life, writings and reputation for holiness, and the candidate becomes a Servant of God
• •The case goes to Rome, where a detailed biography is assembled and theologians assess whether the person lived heroic virtue or died as a martyr, after which the pope may declare them Venerable
• •Beatification requires one verified miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession after death, or none in the case of a martyr, and allows public veneration in a limited area
• •Canonisation requires a second verified miracle and permits veneration by the whole Church, with a feast day and the possibility of churches dedicated in their name
• •A promoter of the faith is appointed to argue against the case, whose informal title, the devil's advocate, entered ordinary English; the role was reduced in the 1983 reform, after which the rate of canonisations rose sharply
• •Martyrdom is a separate route, requiring proof that the person was killed for the faith and accepted death rather than renouncing it

The overwhelming majority of claimed miracles are medical cures, and the procedure for examining them is considerably more sceptical than outsiders expect. A panel of physicians, who are not required to be Catholic and are paid for their work, examines the medical records and must judge whether the recovery was complete, lasting, immediate and without available scientific explanation given the state of knowledge. The panel rules on the medicine only; the theological question of whether the cure is attributable to a particular intercession is decided separately. Most submitted cases fail, frequently because the documentation is incomplete, because treatment was ongoing, or because the condition is one with known spontaneous remission. Critics make the obvious point that inexplicable by current medicine is not the same as miraculous, and the Church's own position is that the finding is one that no natural explanation is available rather than that one is impossible.

The category exists in various forms well beyond Catholicism. Orthodox Christianity recognises saints through a process called glorification that is less legalistic and generally led by a local church, with popular veneration preceding official recognition, and its saints are venerated through icons, which are understood as windows rather than as pictures. Protestant reformers largely rejected the veneration of saints and the intercessory model, on the grounds that Christ is the sole mediator, though several traditions retained commemorations. In Islam the closest equivalent is the wali, a friend of God, whose tombs are visited across much of the Muslim world and whose veneration is a central point of dispute with reformist movements that regard it as forbidden. Hinduism and Buddhism recognise realised teachers and bodhisattvas, without a comparable institutional procedure. Judaism venerates tzadikim, particularly in Hasidic tradition, with pilgrimage to graves.

The practical function in popular religion is intercession and patronage. A saint is asked to pray on the petitioner's behalf, which is theologically distinct from worship and is confused with it constantly, including by some practitioners. Patronage assigns saints to occupations, places, illnesses and circumstances, usually on the basis of an incident in their life or death, so that Lucy, who was blinded, is patron of eye disorders and Barbara, whose father was struck by lightning after killing her, of those working with explosives. The system has been extended freely, and modern assignments include patrons of the internet and of air travel. Relics, physical remains or objects associated with a saint, have been central to Christian practice since late antiquity, driving pilgrimage, church construction and, in the medieval period, a substantial trade and a substantial quantity of fraud, since the number of claimed fragments of the True Cross was a standing joke by the sixteenth century.

Three criticisms recur. The first is theological, made forcefully at the Reformation, that veneration of saints obscures the direct relationship with God and shades into idolatry regardless of the distinctions drawn; the reply is that asking a saint to pray for you is no different in kind from asking a living friend. The second is procedural, that the process is slow, expensive and therefore biased toward candidates with an institutional order behind them to fund and promote the cause, which means members of religious orders are heavily overrepresented relative to laypeople. The third concerns speed and politics, since the reforms of 1983 and the practice of recent popes have produced far more canonisations than any previous period, with some cases advanced quickly, which critics inside and outside the Church have read as recognising figures whose causes serve a current purpose. Against all of this, the historical function is hard to dismiss: the saints supply a very large body of concrete biography about how people have actually lived religious commitment, which is a different kind of instruction from doctrine.

Canonisation is described as recognition rather than promotion, meaning entry into a list of those already understood to be with God. The Catholic process runs from a local inquiry through declarations of heroic virtue, beatification with one verified miracle and canonisation with a second, with medical panels assessing claimed cures against the standard of no available scientific explanation. Orthodox glorification is less legalistic, Protestant traditions largely rejected intercession, and the Islamic equivalent of venerated friends of God is a live point of dispute.