The canonization process is no longer as arduous as before Saint John Paul II amended the procedures, but it’s still a lengthy, bureaucratic system that can become mired in paperwork and backlogs of cases.
At a breakout session July 21 during the National Black Catholic Congress in National Harbor, Maryland, the theology behind the Church’s emphasis on saints, and the nuts and bolts of the sainthood process were explained by Washington Auxiliary Bishop Roy Campbell Jr., who serves as president of the congress, and Dr. Jeannine Marino, Secretary for Pastoral Ministry and Social Concerns for The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. Marino is a canon lawyer with particular training in the canonization process.
Six Black men and women from the United States are somewhere in the canonization process, and their causes were frequently referenced in various sessions of the National Black Catholic Congress and at the Masses during the gathering. Their images formed the backdrop of the main gathering hall at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center which hosted the conference.
Bishop Campbell explained the Catholic Church’s reasoning for declaring some particularly holy people as saints, while noting that “you and I are saints in the making, if we do what we are called to do.”
Saints are meant to be examples of how to live out our lives in holiness, he said. “Holiness is a reality attainable by all.”
Saint John Paul II was particularly focused on creating saints, and he significantly streamlined the process, building upon the Second Vatican Council’s universal call to holiness for all the faithful, Bishop Campbell said. Pope Francis has, in turn, worked to put brakes on the costs and ensure that a set fee schedule is followed, ending the more opaque and unmonitored charging system that previously existed, Marino said.
Marino walked through the exhaustive process of seeking canonization, with its diocesan and Vatican phases and requirements for potentially tens of thousands of pages of documents including witness testimonies, medical records and theological review to be consolidated then bound and submitted in triplicate.
While the process of canonization “is not exactly a popularity contest, a candidate does need to be well-known and awareness of them needs to be shown to spread,” she said. A candidate’s reputation for holiness needs to be growing and be recognized both within and outside the Church. It is both a process of spiritual evaluation and painstaking legal review, she explained.
For example, the canonization cause for Dorothy Day has so far included the submission of 30,000 pieces of evidence, Marino said. Day is categorized as a Servant of God, the title given to those whose canonization cause is under investigation, prior to being declared venerable.
A cause for canonization requires those working to have someone recognized as a saint, such as a diocese or religious order, designate a postulator to shepherd the process, as well as a financial administrator to oversee expenses that can cost $350,000 or more, Marino said.
While recent popes have cut some of the red tape of the canonization process, “what hasn’t caught up is human resources,” Marino said. The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican office that reviews cases, has thousands of cases awaiting review and a staff of just 28 people, five of whom are “relators,” those who assemble the historic documentation, she said. In the United States, only about 10 people are trained to be postulators, who oversee the causes at the diocesan level, she said.
The six Black candidates for sainthood from the United States include four who have been designated as venerable: Father Augustus Tolton of Chicago, the first U.S. Catholic priest publicly known to be Black who died in 1897; Pierre Toussaint of New York, who died in 1853 and was known for his charitable work; Mother Mary Lange of Baltimore, the foundress of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first religious congregation of African American women, who died in 1882; and Henriette Delille of New Orleans, the foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Family who died in 1862. Two others whose causes are active include Servant of God Julia Greeley of Denver, who was known for her devout Catholic faith and died in 1918; and Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman of Mississippi, a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration and renowned evangelist and educator who died in 1990.
