Ten Steps to Becoming a Saint
A quick and easy guide on how to get your halo
There are supposedly 10,000 saints in the Christian Canon, and more are being added every year. In fact, as you read this the Vatican is reviewing miracles and certain people in the process of making them saints. This process is, however, very long (it could take centuries) and very complex, with hundreds of rules and precedents to be followed. Luckily, the process for becoming a Christian saint can be whittled down to just ten easy steps.
Step One: Be Dead
Unfortunately, you cannot be alive and a saint at the same time. The whole point of a saint is that you have been received into Heaven by God himself and that you possess beatific vision that allows Him to perform miracles through you.
In fact, the more dramatic the death, the better your chances are. This is known as Martyrdom. Saint Sebastian (d.288) was persecuted as part of Emperor Diocletian’s purge of Christians; he was tied to a tree and shot with arrows but did not die, he was instead clubbed to death a few days later. Saint Bartholomew the Apostle was skinned alive and then beheaded in Turkey. Saint Lawrence was grilled to death on the orders of Emperor Valerian in 258. Apparently, whilst slowly burning to death on a red-hot gridiron, he said to his executors “I’m well done on this side. Turn me over.”
Step Two: Be Catholic
Whilst all Christian denominations pray to, or at least acknowledge, the existence of the saints, to be made a saint nowadays you almost always need to be a Catholic.
One of the key arguments during the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century was that people were so obsessed with saints that they were worshipping them instead of God. The authority of the Pope as God’s representative on Earth was rebuked, as was his consequent authority to create saints. As such, many Protestant denominations like Lutherans, Baptists, and Pentecostals do not acknowledge any saint made after the Reformation. Calvinists believe that they are all saints, alive or not, and the likes of St Peter are no holier than them. For Protestants, nobody on Earth can create a saint, which is why very few churches create and venerate their own saints.
The only saint to be created after the Reformation by a Protestant denomination was in 1660. The Church of England made King Charles I Saint Charles the Martyr in recognition of his execution in 1649 after his refusal to acknowledge the authority of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan church after the English Civil War.
The Eastern Orthodox and other Orthodox denominations have their own process of creating and venerating saints, but it is rarely used and far more difficult to follow. They, like Protestant Churches, mostly keep to the older saints mentioned in the Bible and early church texts.
Step Three: Have a cult following
So you are dead. But despite your Godly life and miracle-working, what separates you from all the other bodies in the churchyard? You need a small group of avid fans and followers visiting your grave, death place, or birthplace almost daily, alleging that miracles have been performed when they prayed to you, and proclaiming you a healer or martyr.
They may also begin worshipping objects from your life such as your clothes or bones as relics and proclaim they have healing powers too. This form of religious ritual began in the third century and gained momentum in the fourth and sixth.
After Thomas Becket was murdered on the orders of King Henry II in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, people began visiting the martyr’s tomb in the cathedral crypt and claimed they had been healed. Adam the Forester was lethally shot with an arrow by a poacher whilst guarding the king’s hunting woods; he was taken to Canterbury and drank some water containing Becket’s blood and was miraculously healed. “Mad Henry” of Fordwich was dragged into the cathedral by two caretakers. After a whole night beside Becket’s tomb, Henry was found calmed and cured and kneeling peacefully at the tomb. Each of these miracles (some 700) was recorded by monks William of Canterbury and Benedict of Peterborough and relayed to the Pope in Rome, who canonised him Saint Thomas of Canterbury just two years later.
Step Four: You will need a Pope
Before the tenth century, all that was needed to make you a saint and be venerated was the consent and dispensation of the local bishop.
St Augustine of Hippo (d.430) described the procedure in the 400s. The local bishop would hear the arguments and claims of your cult followers and then establish a canonical enquiry to go through the evidence. He would then pass his judgement to his archbishop and if he concurred then you would be canonised and your relics placed in churches to be publicly venerated.
From the 990s, however, popes, the Bishops of Rome, increasingly asserted their singular authority to create saints. In 993, Pope John XV became the first bishop to canonise someone outside his diocese of Rome when he canonised Udalrich, Bishop of Augsburg. From then on, popes began intervening more in canonisations and bishops increasingly sought their dispensation in local canonisations.
This procedure led to the decree of Pope Alexander III in 1170 that only the pope, as God’s sole representative on Earth, had the authority to proclaim someone a saint. St Walter of Pontoise became the last person to be canonised by someone other than the pope, when Hugh de Boves, Archbishop of Rouen declared him a saint in 1153. Ever since then, only the pope has the ability to make someone a saint.
The record for the most saints created by one pope is held by Pope John Paul II, who canonised 482 saints in just 26 years; more than the last four centuries combined.
Step Five: Become a ‘Servant of God’
From the 1500s, all candidates for canonisation passed by the bishops to Rome had their cases examined and judged in the Sacred Congregation for Rites, whose role it was to decide the validity of each case before passing their verdict to the pope. In 1969, Pope Paul VI replaced the archaic body with the Congregation of the Causes of Saints. In 1983, the Congregation and procedure of making a saint were reformed to make the process more simple and less haphazard and corrupt.
The reforms stated that the process for canonisation begins at the diocesan (bishop) level. The bishop of the place you died opens an investigation into your virtues after your cult followers have petitioned him. This cannot happen until five years after your death, unless the pope intercedes and speeds the process up as Pope Benedict XVI did for John Paul II just a few weeks after he died in 2005.
Your writings, speeches, and sermons are examined and a detailed biography of your life is written from eye-witness accounts. When all this evidence is collected, the bishop then titles you a ‘Servant of God’ or Servus Dei in his nomination to the Congregation of the Causes of Saints in Rome. But whilst this is going on, strict rules are in place that no ‘pagan’ worship of your body and relics happens… you are not a saint yet.
Step Six: Become ‘Venerable’
Your case is now with the Congregation in Rome. They exhume your body examine it whilst conducting a wider investigation into your life and supposed miracles.
If they have sufficient evidence, they recommend to the pope that he proclaim your ‘heroic virtue’. This means that the pope and church have recognised your dedication to the theological virtues of faith, hope, charity, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
You may now be known as the Venerable [insert name here]; you still do not have a feast day and your presence in Heaven is not yet certain, but prayer cards of you can be printed to encourage people to pray for a miracle from you to improve your case for canonisation.
Because of the length of the canonisation process, sometimes decades or even centuries, being ‘Venerable’ is often a kind of saint’s purgatory. St Bede, the English Benedictine monk and historian, was declared Venerable soon after his death in 735, but it was not until 1899, eleven hundred years later, that he was formally canonised by Pope Leo XIII. In fact, he is known today as ‘St Bede the Venerable’ and is still most recognisable as ‘the Venerable Bede’.
Step Seven: Be a miracle worker
Beatification, the next step in the canonisation process, is the certification from the pope that you are in Heaven and have been saved, granting you the name ‘the Blessed’. Gaining this title depends on your circumstances.
If you were a martyr, having died for your faith like poor St Lawrence, all the pope needs to do is declare your death was martyrdom and that you gave your life as ‘a witness of faith’ or as an act of ‘heroic charity’.
If you were not a martyr, and your case lies on how you bore witness to God in your life, proof that you committed a miracle in your life or after your death is required; proving that God has granted you beatific vision. These are almost always medical cures, where a person who is sick with no known cure, prayers are offered to you, the patient fully recovers instantaneously, and doctors have no medical or natural explanation.
For example, in 2001, American deacon Jack Sullivan from Massachusetts attributed his miraculous and inexplicable recovery from a spinal cord disorder to his prayers to the Venerable Cardinal John Henry Newman, who had been venerated in 1991. After investigation, the claim was accepted by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and Cardinal Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.
As a beati, you are now entitled to a feast day, but it can only be celebrated in your home diocese and at special places associated with you.
Step Eight: Overcome the Devil’s Advocate
Throughout your case in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and this could have been decades, there has been one voice blocking your way to sainthood at every turn and opportunity.
This is the Promoter of the Faith, better known as the Advocatus Diabolo or ‘Devil’s Advocate’. This is a canon lawyer and member of the Congregation whose sole job is to take a sceptical view of candidates, look for holes in presented arguments or evidence, and argue that any miracles under review are fraudulent.
The first mention of the Devil’s Advocate was during the beatification of St Lawrence Justinian under Pope Leo X in the 1510s, but the office was officially created by Pope Sixtus V in 1587. During the 1983 reforms to the Congregation, John Paul II reduced the power of the office and changed the title to Promoter of Justice, who now examines the ‘accuracy’ of the Congregation’s enquiry (perhaps how John Paul II was able to make more saints than the past four centuries combined).
However, in controversial cases, the Vatican may still ask critics of the candidates to testify. In 2003, during the beatification hearings of Mother Theresa, her great critic and notorious Atheist, Christopher Hitchens, was interviewed; during which he called her “a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.”
Step Nine: Be a DOUBLE miracle worker
The final step in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints; you need to have a second miracle attributed to you. This needs to have taken place after your death and you need two posthumous miracles if you were a martyr since the first one was not required for your beatification.
Remember Blessed Cardinal Newman? In November 2018, the Congregation heard of how a pregnant American woman had prayed to the Blessed Newman during a life-threatening illness and had completely recovered with no explanation from the doctors. The congregation accepted this second miracle on 12 February 2019 and Newman’s case was passed on to the commission of bishops.
However, in rare cases, the pope may choose to waive this second requirement for canonisation if they, the College of Cardinals, and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints all agree the Blessed lived a meritorious and monumental life in the service of God. This was most recently used in 2014, when Pope Francis canonised St Pope John XXIII, who had convened the monumental Second Vatican Council in 1962.
Step Ten: Win over the bishops and enjoy the show
You now have the minimum two certified miracles required for canonisation and your case has been passed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. But you are still not a saint yet.
Your case for canonisation now needs to be authorised and democratically passed by a commission of bishops specially selected to review your entire case from ‘Servant of God’ to now. If they are satisfied and the motion for your canonisation is passed, you are finally passed on to the pope for your glorious canonisation ceremony.
A few days before the ceremony, an enormous portrait of you is hung from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Then, on the allotted day, St Peter’s Square is packed with the College of Cardinals, hundreds of bishops, thousands of priests, monks, and nuns from across the Catholic world, representatives from other denominations, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of faithful who have travelled for the event. Indeed, for the canonisation of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII in 2014, 1.5 million people were squeezed into the square.
The ceremony begins with some readings of your writings or ruminations and a hymn is sung by the Vatican Choir. The pope issues the papal greeting. The Prefect and members of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints then approach the pope and request he proceed with canonising you and any other Blesseds being canonised. They present your completed biography to be blessed, a prayer is said and the litany of saints read.
The pope then says the magic words (in Latin):
“In honour of the Holy Trinity, for the glory of the Catholic faith and development of the Christian life, with the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and of Ourself, after long reflection, invoked divine assistance many times and listened to the opinion of many of our Fathers in the Episcopate [Bishops] declare and define as a saint the Blessed [insert name here] and insert their name in the Canon of the Saints and establish that throughout the Church they be honoured devoutly among all the saints. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
And there we have it! You are officially a saint. It has been officially decreed that the holiness of God runs through you and you sit among the likes of St Peter and Moses in Heaven. A feast day is celebrated in your name across the Catholic world, churches, and parishes can be named after you, and your relics celebrated and worshipped. You are a holder of the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, and it may have only taken a few hundred years.
