THE AMERICA ONE NEWS
Jun 1, 2025  |  
0
 | Remer,MN
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge.
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge and Reasoning Support for Fantasy Sports and Betting Enthusiasts.
back  
topic
NYTimes
New York Times
26 Apr 2025
Elisabetta Povoledo


NextImg:Will Pope Francis Be Made a Saint?

Although two of the five popes before Pope Francis have been named saints, merely serving as pontiff is not a shoo-in to canonization. At least not anymore.

In the early years of the Roman Catholic Church, most popes, starting with St. Peter, who is considered the first to hold the seat, were named saints after they died. Of the first 50 popes, 48 got the honor. Over time, it became much rarer.

To date, 80 of the 266 popes to serve over nearly 2,000 years have been canonized. Another 11 are on a waiting list of sorts, having been beatified, the penultimate step to sainthood.

Getting there involves years of investigation and review by the church, particularly the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Vatican officials and consultants examine candidates’ goodness, holiness and devotion to God and carefully scrutinizes their writings. Those who pass muster are declared “venerable.”

The next step is beatification, which requires the dicastery to accept the validity of a miracle brought about by the intercession of the candidate. After that, the Vatican must accept the validity of a second miracle attributed to the person’s intercession for them to be declared a saint. The pope makes the final decision on canonization.

Image
A tapestry showing Pope John Paul II hanging from the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. In 2014, two Popes, John Paul II and John XXIII, were canonized during a solemn celebration led by Pope Francis.Credit...Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press
Image
Pope John XXIII, wearing the triple-crowned tiara of the papacy, sitting on a portable throne as he leaves St. Peter’s Basilica in 1962.Credit...Associated Press

The most recent popes to be been canonized are John XXIII and John Paul II. They became saints at a joint ceremony that Francis presided over in 2014.

For most of the church’s history, decades usually passed between a person’s death and the beginning of a push for their canonization.

From 1588 to 1978, the average time span between a person’s death and sainthood was 262 years, according to Rachel McCleary, a researcher at Harvard University. That dropped to just over 100 years during the last three papacies, in part because John Paul II shortened the waiting period to begin a cause for sainthood, as the process is known, to five years after a person’s death.

Even that can be waived. At John Paul II’s 2005 funeral, which hundreds of thousands attended, banners and cheers rose from the mourners saying, “Santo, subito,” or “Sainthood now.” His successor, Benedict XVI, waived the waiting period, allowing John Paul to be canonized nine years after his death.

After a Vatican report published in 2020 found that John Paul may have ignored accusations of sexual abuse against the disgraced former prelate Theodore E. McCarrick, critics wondered whether he the pontiff been made a saint too soon.