The Process of Saint Making
by
The Hagiography Circle
A saint is a person so grasped by a religious vision that it becomes central to his or her life in a way that radically changes the person and leads others to glimpse the value of that vision.
Lawrence S. Cunningham, The Meaning of Saints (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 65.
According to the provisions of the apostolic constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister and its Normae (promulgated in 1983), a beatification cause may be initiated by a promoter five years after the death in fama sanctitatis (with fame of holiness) or in odium fidei, uti fertur (presumably killed out of hatred for the faith) of one or a group of professed Catholics. This promoter, or actor, may be an individual or, as commonly practiced, a group (e.g., a parish, a religious congregation, a diocese, an association of lay faithful, or even a civil body) duly recognized by ecclesiastical authorities for financing and promoting this enterprise.
It is the task of the actor to request the bishop (formally called competent bishop) of the diocese where the individual/s died to begin the diocesan inquest into his/her/their life and death. Likewise, the actor must formally name a postulator who needs to be legitimately recognized by the competent bishop. The postulator, who normally resides in Rome, is the lawyer of the cause and representative of the actor before the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (CCS), the Vatican office that has universal competency over such matters. He/she may also appoint, with the consent of the actor, a vice-postulator who acts in his/her behalf in the sponsoring diocese. Meanwhile, the competent bishop should set up a diocesan commission whose task is to examine the writings of and on the proposed candidate/s for beatification. Likewise, he is required to report the progress of the investigation to the CCS and obtain from it a nulla osta which ascertains that nothing in the records of any of the Vatican offices would merit a suspension of the investigation. When this certification is issued, the competent bishop is already mandated to begin an investigation of the witnesses to the life and death of the candidate/s, at this point referred to as Servant of God. All communications concerning the cause from the CCS to the actors, competent bishop, and the postulator are classified according to its assigned protocol number. When the diocesan commission's work is accomplished, the competent bishop shall send all gathered materials and testimonies to the CCS.
At this point, the CCS appoints a relator to the cause. An insider of the CCS, his task is to supervise the writing of the positio by the postulator and his/her collaborator. In the positio is collated the findings of the diocesan commission. It is also that valuable reference which will be examined by a body of consultors, theologians, and prelates of the CCS and on whose merit the final outcome of the cause is determined. When a favorable decision on the heroic exercise of virtues or on the martyrdom of the servant of God is unanimously given by these three bodies (depending on how the cause is prioritized, it may take years for this to come out), the cause is presented to the pope for his approval. The decree is formally promulgated on a scheduled date, after which the servant of God is referred to as Venerable.
In the case of martyrs, what follows is the designation of the date for the solemn beatification. For non-martyrs, however, another decree is needed. The Vatican requires that one exceptional miracle be proven to have been wrought through the venerable's intercession. When this is found, the postulator and the bishop of the diocese where the miracle occurred must petition the CCS to mandate its investigation. All records gathered during this inquiry are to be sent to the CCS, which then appoints a body of qualified physicians or scientists, the consulta medica, to judge its extraordinariness. A favorable judgment from this body is presented to the pope who formalizes his recognition of the miracle by a decree. Only then can the non-martyr's beatification be finally scheduled.
The beatification normally takes place in Rome. In several cases, the pope has celebrated it in the diocese that sponsored the cause. After the solemn act, the venerable is referred to as Blessed. However, his/her/their cult is canonically limited within a particular ecclesiastical jurisdiction or religious community.
For the blessed to be canonized, the actor of the cause must find another extraordinary miracle that took place after the beatification. The very procedure for investigating a miracle before the beatification is repeated. When the decree over this miracle is promulgated, the CCS schedules the date for the canonization. After this ceremony, the blessed is henceforth called Saint and is presented to the entire church for veneration and emulation.
Source: Fabijan Veraja, Le Cause di Canonizzazione dei Santi (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992).