According to the blog CUSA: “Today is the Feast of St. Clare of Assisi…She was the first saint canonized using the new process of canonization. Before her, the saints were proclaimed by agreement of the people and their bishops. Hers was the first process that called witnesses and took testimony as to the content of her life and vocation.” More here.

Last Saturday, the op-ed page of The Los Angeles Times carried an column I wrote regarding the old pope, the new pope, my favorite saint and the saint-making process. This weekend, that same column was picked up by the Miami Herald, the Houston Chronicle and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Post-Gazette went the extra step of publishing a photo of Saint Gaetano Catanoso with the piece (thanks to op-ed page editor John Allison).

An excerpt: “A Catanoso saint? What kind of joke was this? Intrigued, I decided to look into this strange family phenomenon. I met with Vatican priests and interviewed relatives in the South of Italy for whom this distant cousin remains a powerful spiritual touchstone. In the process of learning about my relative, I learned plenty about why John Paul was so intent on making saints.”

A Houston reader wrote: “Pope John Paul II might have been a bit profligate in overseeing the canonization of so many saints, but I agree with Catanoso that his heart was in the right place. We Catholics here in America appreciate the Church elevating a few of our own, like the inspiring philanthropist Mother Katherine Drexel, to sainthood.”

The Los Angeles Times today carries a column I wrote about the new pope, the old pope and my favorite saint. Thanks to my good friend Frank Wilkinson, executive editor of The Week in New York, for motivation and editing assistance. The piece is here.

It starts like this: “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent,” George Orwell said. The Vatican lately seems to share Orwell’s skepticism.

Pope Benedict XVI has made no secret of his disdain for the high volume of saints named by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005. John Paul II conducted 482 canonizations, naming more saints in 26 years than his predecessors had canonized in the previous four centuries.

Since becoming pope, Benedict has stopped attending the elaborate beatification ceremonies in St. Peter’s Square, the last step before canonization, and has issued a call for “greater sobriety and rigor” in the process. Last week, he replaced the leader of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, an office that fully supported John Paul’s active saint-making philosophy. Vatican-watchers expect the new leader, Archbishop Angelo Amato, to throw more wrenches in the saint-making machinery.

So who need saints, anyway? That’s a question I take personally. Read the whole thing.

Pope Benedict XVI has named a new prefect to lead the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican-based office in charge of receiving and vetting causes for sainthood. Unheralded and overlooked for centuries, the office well known (and sometimes criticized) and Pope John Paul II because of the rules changes in 1983 and the shear volume of sancitifications — 482 saints, 1,100 blesseds — more than all popes combined in the previous 400 years. There are reasons for this, as I’ve discussed here and in my book. It is not likely that Archbishop Angelo Amato will draw the same attention, not under Benedict.

Commentary here.

I came across this web called Ask Sister Mary Martha. The tagline is: “Life is tough. Nuns are tougher. If you need helpful advice, just ask Sister Mary Martha. She’ll help you. Just don’t expect any sympathy.”

Here she blogs about Father Damien, a saint in waiting.

Hard to set aside talk of saints today when a new one with American ties will soon be named: Father Damien, a missionary priest from Belgium who cared for lepers in Hawaii in the 19th century before contracting the disease himself and dying at age 49. Pope Benedict XVI, who canonized Padre Gaetano Catanoso in 2005 in his first-such ceremony, cleared the way this week for Father Damien.

Hawai’i magazine.com reports: :“Father Damien—born Jozef de Veuster in 1840—arrived in Honolulu from Belgium in 1864. Working with Catholic missionaries, he was eventually moved by the plight of thousands of Hawaii leprosy patients sent by government order to Molokai’s isolated Kalaupapa peninsula. Father Damien moved to Molokai in 1873 to live among the sufferers and minister to them. He would spend the rest of his life on the island. After contracting leprosy—now known as Hansen’s disease—he died in 1889.”

The entire story is here. Whispers in the Loggia blog reports here.

Some canonization causes just move faster than others. Long ago, successful causes for sainthood were typically measured in centuries. Since JPII, successful causes were often measured in decades (it took Padre Gaetano Catanoso 26 years, from start to sainthood). The process of canonization for the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, who was the first successor of St. Josemaria Escriva, is hurtling forward.

The details are here.

This story on a Polish web site suggests that the process of beatification for Pope John Paul II is being slowed in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Some suggested it might come this year, on the 30th anniversary of his rise to the papacy. Others suggested it would come next year, on the fourth anniversary of his death. Now, the Vatican suggests it could be a few years.

Under the sensational headline “Vatican halts John Paul II’s ’saint factory’,” The Independent in Great Britain reports today that Pope Benedict XVI “wants the congregation to pay ‘maximum attention’ in its evaluation of documents supporting a candidate’s claim, with ’scrupulous observation’ of ecclesiastical norms. The Pope himself reads every file page by page, according to the archbishop, and until he is personally satisfied with the miracles accredited to a candidate, no progress is possible.”

The paper goes on to note that such scrupulous observation may stall the most anticipated canonizations — that of Mother Teresa and of Pope John Paul II, who critics accused of running a “saint-making factory” during his 26-year pontificate. The entire story is here online.

Some context, in defense of JPII. Yes, he is responsible for naming 482 saints, more than all popes combined in the previous 400 years. Yes, he changed the rules regarding canonizations in 1983, eliminating the office of the Devil’s Advocate, and reducing the number of miracles needed from four to two.

Now some additional context: some 380 of the saints JPII named were canonized as martyrs, some in groups as large as 100 at a time in a single ceremony. The late pope canonized 103 individual saints, or roughly four per year for 26 years, a ratio not that much greater than his many, many predecessors.

But the real defense is this: JPII rightly saw the saint-naming process as too laborious, too bogged down, and too focused on holy men and women from another age and era. Saints are named, first and foremost, to be role models for the faithful, and particularly for those struggling with their faith. Sometimes it’s hard to draw much inspiration from a 15th century cleric from Germany or France. So JPII encouraged archbishops to bring him contemporaries who had lived lives of heroic virtue, and from all over the world — not just western Europe. And as I write in Chapter 1 of my book, it was his encouragement that led to a humble priest from Reggio Calabria being presented for sainthood in the first place. And the Catholic faith is richer because of it.

I am proud to say that Padre Gaetano Catanoso was among the last of the five saints to be approved by JPII before he died, and among the very first to be canonized by Pope Benedict XVI, now seemingly intent on slowing the process down. Benedict has every right to defend and protect this most sacred and ancient Catholic honor. But it is both unfair, and largely inaccurate to castigate John Paul as Benedict considers his own changes to the canonization process.

What do you think?

Two years ago this time, I was on the front end of my Italian research for this book. I arrived in Rome on June 9 and spent three days there before heading south to Calabria for nearly a month. At the end of every day, I would record my thoughts and impressions in detailed journal entries. While I can see now what my book has become, two years ago, my sense of the story was nebulous at best. Periodically this summer, I’d like to share elements of those journals entries for whatever insight they might shed on the writing process.

June 9, 2006: Rome, Italy (following my first interview with a Vatican insider who began to explain the intricate and arcane rules and regulations of naming saints.)

“There are saints and there is the saint making process. The latter is best not observed too closely for fear of making practical and mundane and entirely bureaucratic a process the outside world would prefer to see as entirely mystical. The former, however, the saints, are real and vital and their influence is impossible to overestimate among the faithful.

“Yet if the process turns out not to be touched by grace, but driven by process, timing, new rules and an aggressive postulator, so be it. What’s true to the faithful is this: God chooses his saints and always has. They are there whether we know it or not. Here on earth, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints does the best it can to identify the saints, bring their stories to the world, and hope that the faithful are inspired to live similar lives. It’s what naming saints is all about.”