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Catholic World News News Feature

Pope raising standards for beatification April 27, 2006

Pope Benedict XVI has called for tighter limits on the number of candidates for beatification, in a message to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

In a long letter to Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Pope Benedict said that a cause should not be opened unless there is "a proven reputation for holiness." The Pope's letter was sent on April 24, as the Congregation opened its plenary meeting; the text was released by the Vatican on April 27.

The Holy Father said that the Church should carefully refine the definition of martyrdom, in light of changing world conditions. He explained that persecutors today usually claim that they are not hostile to the faith, "but manufacture different reasons-- for example, political or social ones." Nevertheless, the Pope continued, if the persecutor is not motivated by odium fidei, there is no real martyrdom in accordance with the perennial theological and juridical doctrine of the Church."

A martyr must suffer for the faith, the Pope added, and the cause for beatification must include evidence that the candidate accepted that suffering willingly. These criteria would make it more difficult to affirm the martyrdom of a Church official who died under uncertain circumstances-- for example, a missionary killed in a terrorist attack-- when there is no clear evidence that the killers were motivated by hatred for Christianity, or that the victim accepted his own death.

Pope Benedict asked the Congregation to maintain rigorous standards in examining reports of miracles. Both scientists and theologians should study the reports, he said, although "the decisive judgment falls to theology, which alone is capable of interpreting miracles in the light of the faith." He added that "unbroken Church practice establishes the need for a physical miracle; a moral miracle is not enough."

The Pope's instructions also called for more active involvement of diocesan bishops in the causes of saints. It was in order to expand the role of the dioceses, Pope Benedict said, that he has allowed for beatification ceremonies to be held in different places, with the local bishops presiding. That practice, he added, serves to underline the "substantial difference between the celebration of beatification and that of canonization," since only the Roman Pontiff can preside at a canonization.

The change in beatification procedures was formally announced by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in a new set of norms released last November, which also covered the conduct of diocesan investigations into candidates for beatification. Pope Benedict said that the need for those norms was established by the experience of more than 20 years since Popep John Paul II promulgated Divinus Perfectionis Magister, an apostolic constitution of 1983 establishing the norms for beatification inquiries.

"From her beginnings the Church has dedicated great attention to the procedures that elevate Servants of God to the glory of the altars," the Pope wrote in his April 24 letter. The latest revision of the norms, he said, should "safeguard the seriousness of investigations."