Just What We Need, Another Bleedin' Saint

You'd think they would have enough of 'em by now, it's not as though the Catholic Church is exactly short of saints is it, they've got the buggers coming out of their ears?

And there does appear to be a question or two about the validity of Popey's miracle.

There has as yet been no independent assessment of the medical evidence for Sister Marie's inexplicable cure. Another miracle will have to be certified by the Vatican before Pope John Paul II can be declared a saint.

The thinking behind the reason for requiring evidence of miracles performed by a new saint is that this is the proof that he (or she) is already in Heaven. There have been reports that Sister Marie has fallen ill again since her "cure" and that her diagnosis with Parkinson's Disease may have been incorrect.

Ah those miracles, they can be a bit of a bugger at times, but what are details like that when you're on the fast track to saintliness. When people talk miracles, I'm always reminded of Richard Dawkins exposing the nonsense surrounding Lourdes, where he asks if anyone had ever grown a new leg?

John Paul II beatification: Politics of saint-making
By John L Allen Senior correspondent, National Catholic Reporter

John Paul II's beatification is the quickest of modern times - what does it take to be fast-tracked to sainthood?

Catholics may believe there is something supernatural about their Church, but as the 13th Century theologian St Thomas Aquinas taught, it is not exempt from the normal realities of human nature - including the laws of psychology, sociology, and even politics.

If that is true of the Church writ large, it is also true of the business of declaring saints. That fact was on clear display on 1 May, when Pope John Paul II was beatified, the final step before sainthood, in a ceremony in Rome that drew hundreds of thousands of people to St Peter's Square.

What is beatification?

Beatification, the final step before sainthood, arose as a way of authorising veneration to a candidate in the local area where she or he lived. It entitles the candidate to be called "Blessed". After 1 May, Catholics in Poland and in Rome will celebrate a feast in honour of "Blessed John Paul II" every year on 22 October. In a special decree issued in April, the Vatican has also given Catholics all over the world one year to celebrate Masses in thanksgiving for the beatification of John Paul
Canonisation is the formal act of declaring someone a saint in the Catholic Church

John Paul's beatification comes just six years and one month after his death in 2005. The perception of haste has puzzled some observers, especially those inclined to question the late pope's record on combating the scourge of clerical sexual abuse.

Formally speaking, the Vatican's explanation is that all the traditional criteria have been met. There is a popular grassroots conviction that John Paul was a holy man - an exhaustive four-volume Vatican study concluded that he lived a life of "heroic virtue" - and a miracle has been documented as resulting from his intervention.

The miracle involves the healing of a 49-year-old French nun from Parkinson's disease, the same affliction from which the late pope suffered.
Five fast-track factors

Without questioning any of that, it is probably fair to say that institutional dynamics and even a degree of politics also help explain the rapid result.

John Paul reformed the sainthood process in 1983, making it faster, simpler, and cheaper. The office of "Devil's advocate" - an official whose job was to try to knock down the case for sainthood - was eliminated, and the required number of miracles was dropped.

The idea was to lift up contemporary role models of holiness in order to convince a jaded secular world that sanctity is alive in the here and now. The results are well known: John Paul II beatified and canonised more people than all previous popes combined.
File picture of Josemaria Escriva Opus Dei's Josemaria Escriva had a powerful lobby pushing his cause

Since the reforms took effect, at least 20 cases qualify as "fast track" beatifications, meaning the candidate was beatified within 30 years of death. Taking a careful look at that list, aside from lives of holiness and miracle reports, at least five factors appear to influence who makes the cut.

First, successful candidates have an organisation behind them with both the resources and the political savvy to move the ball. The Catholic movement Opus Dei (of Da Vinci Code fame), for instance, boasts a roster of skilled canon lawyers, and they invested significant resources in their founder's cause. St Josemaria Escriva was canonised in 2002.

Second,...more



Q&A: John Paul II's beatification

The Vatican has hosted its biggest event in years - the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II.

.........How does the Vatican justify beatifying the late Pope?

The CCS has interviewed hundreds of persons who knew the late pontiff, and carried out exhaustive enquiries into his reputation for holiness. Pope John Paul II himself created more new Saints and Blesseds that any of his predecessors.

Vatican experts, including Pope Benedict's own personal physician, have also examined the medical evidence for an allegedly miraculous cure - that of a 49-year-old French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre Normand, in 2005 from Parkinson's Disease, the same malady which afflicted Pope John Paul II in his later years.

Sister Marie claims that she and her fellow nuns prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul II after his death. Her sudden cure had no logical medical explanation and she later resumed her work as a maternity nurse, the Vatican says.

Do we only have the Vatican's word for the miracle?

There has as yet been no independent assessment of the medical evidence for Sister Marie's inexplicable cure. Another miracle will have to be certified by the Vatican before Pope John Paul II can be declared a saint.

The thinking behind the reason for requiring evidence of miracles performed by a new saint is that this is the proof that he (or she) is already in Heaven. There have been reports that Sister Marie has fallen ill again since her "cure" and that her diagnosis with Parkinson's Disease may have been incorrect.




Could John Paul II be declared a saint?

This depends on the results of the further examination of his personal record over the clerical sexual abuse crisis which hit the Roman Catholic Church on his watch from the 1990s up to the time of his death. The first reaction of the US-based victims' association Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) was to criticise what it described as a "hasty drive to confer sainthood on the pontiff under whose reign most of the widely documented clergy sex crimes and cover-ups took place".



Despite what the Vatican calls his "imposing fame for holiness", the late pontiff also appears to have been duped by the former head of the Legionaries of Christ, a Mexican priest called Fr Marcial Maciel Delgado. This man, who had access at the highest levels inside the Vatican for many years, has been exposed as a swindler and perpetrator of serious sexual misconduct including the fathering of two children who allege that he sexually abused them. More Q&A Vatican.

Related: Hold The Halo. Maureen Dowd
Don't let 'miracles' trump science