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Even before his funeral Mass got underway on January 5, there were already calls to declare Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI santo subito, in a repetition of what happened at the death of John Paul II.
This could be simply a déjà vu, repeating what happened almost 18 years ago.
But looking at the larger historical context helps us understand the importance of this issue, in its similarities with the precedents and its unique characteristics for the Catholic Church and the papacy of today.
First of all, we should remember that proclaiming the sainthood of the men who are elected Bishops of Rome by a conclave of cardinals is at the same time old and recent.
Of the first 48 popes who died before the year 500, 47 are saints; half of them were martyrs.
The canonisation of popes who reigned in the following fifteen centuries was rare, but that has accelerated with vertiginous speed in the last few decades.
The real change began in the 19th century with what historians and theologians call the “Romanization” or “papalisation” of Catholicism, especially with (the First) Vatican Council (1869-1870) and its proclamation of papal primacy and infallibility.
This produced a more pope-centered way of governing the Church, but also new forms of devotion to the person of the Roman Pontiff.
The increased inclination to canonise popes accelerated under John Paul II, who canonised an enormous number of saints (including — to his credit — many laypersons, including women and people who were married).
He also shortened the necessary waiting period before opening the “cause” (or process) for beatification/canonisation from 50 years after the candidate’s death to just five years. He completely waived that shortened period for Mother Teresa of Calcutta. And when John Paul died in April 2005, Benedict XVI waived the waiting period for him as well.
In the years spanning 2000 to 2022, three of the six popes from the post-Vatican II era — John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II — have all been canonised. And in September 2022 Pope Francis beatified the fourth — John Paul I, who was pope for 33 days only.
Since the election of Pius X in 1909 there have been 10 popes.
Four of them are already saints.
Excluding Francis and the recently deceased Benedict, that means half of the remaining eight are canonised and another (John Paul I) is on the way.
The last cause of the last four popes immediately preceding Benedict have been made saints almost by matter of course.
Now it has become almost automatic for the popes to be declared saints shortly after their death.
This was done at great speed for John Paul II especially, and the same could be done or attempted for Benedict XVI.
But it is my opinion that this trend, which was inaugurated in the 20th century, should be halted.
I offer three reasons why.
Canonising the papacy, playing politics and reckoning with abuse
First, canonising popes means canonising the papacy — by popes in the Vatican.
The Vatican used to have less control over the canonisation process (technically, a trial). But in the 17th century Church of the Counter-Reformation, the Roman Curia became much more in charge.
It was a time when canonising popes was an exception.
Now the papacy is canonising itself without any Churchwide and extended-in-time period of discernment on the wisdom of canonising a particular pope.
It can be seen as a way to shield the papacy from moral and historical judgment, something like boosting the claims made by Vatican I about the papacy.
At the same time, it seems to respond to a logic that is more media-driven than ecclesial: i.e. the need to confirm the media-friendliness of the contemporary papacy through the elevation to sainthood the person who is elected pope.
The second reason for a moratorium on canonising pope concerns Church politics.
The history of the post-Vatican II period is instructive.
John XXIII died in June 1963 between the first and second sessions of Vatican Council II, and there was a push by many Council Fathers to follow an ancient conciliar tradition of making him a saint by proclamation.
This triggered a series of countermeasures by conservative Catholics, which led to the adoption of counterbalances.
Alongside the beatification of the “progressive” John XXIII in 2000, the “conservative” Pius IX was beatified. And at the 2014 ceremony when John was canonised, John Paul II was also made a saint.
In the 19th century, the elevation of popes with primacy and infallibility was also a political act – in part against secular modernity, in part an appropriation of mechanisms typical of political modernity and of the modern State.
The difference with the 19th century is that now the very act of popes canonising previous popes has become part of internal ecclesial politics and it is not helping the unity of the Church.
The third reason for a moratorium on canonising popes is related to the clergy sex abuse crisis.
The papacy’s handling of abuse is a controversial issue in the Church today, and it will remain controversial in the foreseeable future.
If the Catholic Church wants to grow in the discernment Pope Francis has called for in response to the abuse crisis, the institution must stop canonising popes.
This is important for the “purification of memory” that is now in order.
In the latest phase of this ongoing crisis, there has been a greater focus on how the Roman Curia — and thus the pope — has handled particular cases of abuse and the issue as a whole.
When a pope canonises his predecessors, the institutional Church appears to once again be defendant, judge, and jury all at the same time.
But those days are long gone.
The very reputation of John Paul II has become tarnished for his handling of cases of abuse both as a bishop in Poland and as pope.
Recently there have been calls to de-canonise him because of is mishandling clergy abuse cases and his theology on women and human sexuality.
Although I thought it was unwise wisdom to canonise John Paul II, I am against the idea of de-canonising him (even if that were possible at all with one single decision or act).
It would appear to be just as political as his immediate canonisation did.
We are now in new territory
With the recent death of Benedict XVI, there are also two distinctly new elements to consider.
First, the calls for John Paul II to immediately be made a saint upon his death in 2005 came from the Focolare Movement.
Its members made numerous “Santo Subito!” posters that they raised to accompanying chants during his funeral in Saint Peter’s Square.
This eruption of devotion for the deceased pope was intended to be seen as an expression of the vox populi – albeit a movement very well integrated into the ranks of the institution.
This call for a quick canonisation was later well received and embraced by other movements and institutional voices, especially the cardinals, but most of all John Paul II’s successor, Benedict XVI.
The current movement to declare Benedict “santo subito” is more muted compared to 2005.
Even before the January 5 funeral of the late German pope, his personal secretary — Archbishop Georg Gänswein — was part of a media blitz that created a peculiar and unusual mood in the very first hours after his death.
Even though in the tell-all book published together with Italian journalist Saverio Gaeta, and made available on January 12, Gänswein writes that he “will not take any steps to expedite a canonical process”, would be instructive and a source of wisdom to compare Gänswein’s behaviour — for example – to that of John XXIII’s personal secretary, Mgr Loris Capovilla, who exercised discretion and prudence from the time Pope John died, right up to his beatification.
This is important because calls to canonise Benedict XVI have been made at the same time when a particular agenda of doctrinal policy (especially on the liturgical reform of Vatican II and the theology of the council as a whole) has been advanced by the same voice, thus enhancing the ecclesiastical-political salience of a rapid canonisation.
It must be mentioned here that laments about the liturgical reform of Vatican II have made Pope Francis and his motu proprio Traditionis custodes a target in particularly bitter and divisive polemics (especially in the United States where I live, work, and go to Mass).
This intra-ecclesial feud was not yet manifest when the calls of “Santo subito” erupted at John Paul II’s funeral in 2005.
The second new element that makes today different from back then is the new wave in the history of the Church’s abuse crisis. During the Great Jubilee of 2000, the pope asked for forgiveness for the faults of the Church.
He did not ask forgiveness for clerical sex abuse and no one even noticed or complained.
That’s because the global scandal erupted in 2002 with the Boston Globe “Spotlight” investigations.
At the time of John Paul II’s death, there had been no requests from Church or secular jurisdictions for information about how he had acted in specific cases. Things were already different when he was beatified in 2011 when voices contested his saintliness, especially in light of the abuse crisis.
Since then the shadow of the that crisis has extended over the institution of the papacy.
The Vatican’s efforts to be more transparent started only very recently.
We should remember that the report on the case of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was published by the Holy See only in November 2020.
Until the pontificate of Benedict XVI, no pope (living or dead) had ended up in the spotlight.
This has changed dramatically in the last few years.
Instead, the handling of the crisis is now part of the history of Benedict’s pontificate (especially since 2010) and his life following his resignation (the report on the handling of abuse cases in Germany’s Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, of which he was archbishop between 1977 and 1981, published in January 2022).
Restore the 50-year waiting period
Benedict XVI brought the fight against abuse in the Church to a new level by introducing tighter procedures and new laws.
He was the first pope to meet with survivors of abuse and to take some action against abusers. But before being elected pope, he had been an archbishop and was also cardinal-prefect of the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) for more than 20 years.
That was also a very difficult time for Catholic theologians and religious women, many whom the CDF investigated and even silenced.
All this suggests extreme caution in approaching the issue of the canonisation of popes, also for those who do not want to damage the legacy and memory of Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI and do not want to give the impression of a whitewash.
I say this also as someone who in 2008 edited the Italian version of a volume of Benedict’s essays.
I also teach theology courses where some of Ratzinger’s texts are required reading.
This is not a judgement on Ratzinger-Benedict XVI’s saintliness; it’s a question of opportunity and the need to better understand the issue of canonising popes (not just Benedict XVI) in the current situation of the Church.
In the final analysis, we should cherish and appreciate the Church’s traditional caution about the canonisation processes.
Almost four centuries ago, between 1628 and 1634, Pope Urban VIII decided that a 50-year period had to elapse after the death of the candidate before his or her canonisation.
It was Urban’s reaction against a time when many novel devotions to new saints were being continually born.
It is necessary to rediscover the wisdom of that old norm, especially when it is about the beatification and canonisation of popes.
This is necessary to scale back the mystique of the papacy in contemporary Catholicism.
But it has to do also with the fact that the Church needs a long process of discovering facts surrounding the role of the papacy and of the Roman Curia in the sexual abuse crisis, which is the biggest scandal in modern Church history and the deepest crisis since the time of the Protestant Reformation.
- Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, professor of theology in religious studies at Villanova University, and a celebrated La Croix International columnist who brings who his learning to contemporary issues facing the Church.
- First published in la-Coix International. Republished with permission.
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