Yesterday it was reported that beloved nun and Nobel peace prize winner, Mother Theresa is to be made a saint in September. In light of this, we’ve decided to go through the steps that one has to go through to become a saint. (Step 0- You have to be dead) So let’s go:
- You have to have been deceased for a period of half a decade to be considered into sainthood. This is to avoid bias and to let the emotions following death to calm down so the candidate can be assessed objectively. Sometimes it’s way more than five years, Saint Bede, the theologian, died in 735 but had to wait 1,164 years before he was declared a saint. This waiting period can, however, be waived by the Pope. Pope Benedict XVI set aside the waiting period for his predecessor, John Paul II, in 2005. This was thought to reflect the overwhelming hierarchical support John Paul II enjoyed, and the popular grassroots conviction that he was a holy man. John Paul II had also dispensed with the five-year period for Mother Teresa, beginning the process in 1999, less than two years after her death.
- Once the five years are up, or a waiver is granted, the bishop of the diocese where the person died can open an investigation into the life of the individual, to see whether they lived their lives with sufficient holiness and virtue to be considered for sainthood. Other religious groups in the diocese can also ask the bishop to open the investigation. An investigation of the person’s life is then carried out. The person’s life, deeds and the testimonies of witnesses is required. If there is enough proof of the person’s ‘goodness’, the bishop then asks the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the department that makes recommendations to the Pope on saints, for permission to open the case. Once this hurdle is cleared the individual can be called a “servant of God”.
- The Congregation for the Causes of Saints scrutinises the evidence of the candidate’s holiness, work and signs that people have been drawn to prayer through their example. If the Congregation approves the case, it is passed to the Pope. If the Pope decides that the person lived a life of “heroic virtue”, they can then be called “venerable”. Popes who have been bestowed the title of “venerable” include Paul VI and Pius XII. Other venerable individuals include Irish nun Catherine McAuley, who founded the Sisters of Mercy congregation, and Scottish nun Margaret Sinclair
- To reach the next stage, beatification, a miracle needs to be attributed to prayers made to the individual after their death. The prayers if granted are seen as proof that the individual is already in heaven, and hence able to intercede with God on others’ behalf. Incidents that will be classed as miracles need to be “verified” by evidence before they are accepted as miracles. For John Paul II for instance, Vatican experts examined the medical evidence for an allegedly miraculous cure from Parkinson’s Disease of a 49-year-old French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre Normand. Sister Marie said that she and her fellow nuns prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul II after his death. Her sudden cure had no logical medical explanation, the Vatican says. After beatification, the candidate is given the title “blessed”. There is one exception to the miracle requirement – a martyr, someone who died for their faith, can be beatified without a verified miracle.
- Canonisation is the final step in declaring a deceased person a saint. To reach this stage, a second miracle normally needs to be attributed to prayers made to the candidate after they have been beatified. Martyrs, however, only need one verified miracle to become a saint.
For Mother Theresa, the second miracle involved the healing of a Brazilian man with several brain tumours in 2008