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.

That's my idea.

It's pretty simple: Just stop making every pope a saint. Instead of canonizing Paul VI this year, as you are reportedly planning to do, I suggest…not doing that.

As you know, in 2014, a year after you became pope (and not even ten years after the death of John Paul II), you canonized Popes John XIII and John Paul II on the very same day.

And now I read in the paper that Paul VI is on the docket for 2018, and my first response is to joke, "Who's next, St. John Paul I?"

But it turns out I can't make that joke, because you officially recognized John Paul I as "Venerable" just a few months ago.

Is it possible you're getting a little carried away?

It's not that I have anything against these men as individuals.

Who am I to judge?

It's just that it seems like a pretty big coincidence for all of the popes since Pius XII—ahem, Venerable Pius XII—to have been men of uncommon heroic virtue.

You must agree that, in theory, a non-saintly person could become pope.

I will go so far as to say that it has happened before.

So, if the modern church really has managed to elect an unbroken string of papal saints in the past century, well, that's impressive, but considering that the pope is the one who gets to make that call, it's also a bit...suspect.

Catholic Hall of Fame

The thing about popes is that they are already in the Catholic hall of fame.

They are prayed for by name at every single Mass while they are alive.

When they die, they are buried in the crypt beneath St. Peter's.

Their writings are hosted on the Vatican website.

The faithful can venerate them very easily whenever they are so moved.

Making past popes saints and giving them feast days feels like gilding the lily. And you, Pope Francis, are not usually a lily-gilder. Continue reading

You can probably rattle off the big-name poets the pontiffs often mention.

Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy have been recommended for centuries.

The temperamental master often appears in Vatican documents as "the supreme poet" or, as Pope Pius XI put it, the "poet who has no equal."

Likewise, Shakespeare is a perennial favorite in the Vatican. Pope Paul VI, for instance, praised his "lofty genius and powerful language."

But there are many great poets the popes have lauded that don't have quite that kind of name recognition—at least, not yet. Here are some of them:

Luíz Vaz de Camões

Pope Pius XII quoted the Portuguese Camões twice in his encyclical Saeculo Exeunte Octavo, celebrating 800 years of the country's independence by calling on "the greatest poet of Portugal."

Indeed, Camões' The Lusíads is widely accepted as a classic of world literature.

Cyprian Norwid

St. John Paul II called Norwid "one of Christian Europe's greatest poets and thinkers."

He mentions Norwid three times in his famous Letter to Artists, and he quoted the poet frequently throughout his pontificate.

Léopold Sédar Senghor

The first President of Senegal, Senghor was an esteemed statesman in the eyes of Pope Paul VI and St. John Paul II.

The latter said that Senghor had "analyzed with penetrating insight…the civilization of ‘négritude'," in his praise of the nascent Senegalese culture.

Senghor's name and writings came up multiple times during the 2009 Second African Synod.

Paul Claudel

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has said that he is "very partial to Paul Claudel, to his joie de vivre."

St. John Paul II was fond of quoting Claudel, who is often mentioned alongside such French Catholic greats as Bernanos and Mauriac. Continue reading

Sources

• epicPew article by Stephen Mirarchi
• Image: Breitbart

The family business has now passed to a sixth generation, which stands ready to keep tailoring for popes from their perch near Rome's Pantheon.

For five generations, the Gammarellis have dressed and shod the Vicar of Christ through their family business, Rome's historic Ditta Annibale Gammarelli, located on the city's Via di Santa Chiara near the Pantheon.

Now, after the recent death of manager Annibale Gammeralli, the business will pass to the hands of a sixth generation.

Established in 1798 by Giovanni Antonio Gammarelli, the "Ditta" was founded under Pius VI as a tailor for the Roman clergy. After Giovanni died, management of the shop passed to his son Filippo, and then to Filippo's son Annibale.

In 1874 Annibale moved the shop from its original location to its current spot just steps away from the Pantheon. It's located inside the same building as the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, the prestigious institute that forms future Vatican diplomats.

When Annibale died, his sons Bonaventura and Giuseppe decided to keep the name "Ditta Annibale Gammarelli" as an homage to their father - a name that has since become known to clergy throughout Italy and the world.

In an additional act of homage, Bonaventura decided to name his own son after his father: making the late Annibale Gammarelli the second to carry the name of the family business and to carry it forward.

Annibale passed away July 12 in Rome after a long career managing the sartorial workshop, leaving it in the care of his son Stefano Paolo and his nephews Maximillian and Lorenzo, who are the sixth generation to sew garments for the Pope.

During each conclave the Gammerellis are charged with making three white cassocks in different sizes - small, medium and large - which sit ready and waiting for the new Successor of Peter. Continue reading

Sources

• Crux, from an article by Elise Harris, who works at Catholic News Agency.
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

The "new operating system" Rushkoff recommends turns out to be a variation on the fundamental vision of distributism - the wide, dispersed ownership and exchange of productive assets.

He is quick to reassure his readers that "we don't need to convert to Catholicism or even approve of Vatican doctrine" in order to appropriate their insights.

Rather, the value in the papal social encyclicals is that "they remember"; that is, they retain "a memory of the wheels of commerce that preceded the engines of the industrial age."

Rushkoff's book is particularly important for two reasons: first, he does not simply equate distributism with a back-to-the-land agrarianism, and second, he offers a way beyond the disturbing polarities that have emerged with Sanders, Trump, and Brexit.

This is because Rushkoff's book, while accessible, is not simple. Too often, debates about any topic get forced into a simple pro- and anti- polarity, focused on a single magic bullet (and often enough, a single demon to be expelled).

Worse, such debates too often "fight the last war" - and so Sanders's solutions look like a Scandinavian playbook, while Trump's yearn for a rebuilt manufacturing economy via protectionism and immigrant exclusion.

These solutions are not all wrong, especially in their diagnoses of what has happened - the Sanders/Trump alliance against trade deals evidences this. There is a "tell it like it is" attraction here.

Rushkoff's book, by contrast, insists on grappling with the present situation, which above all is one of massive technological change - higher minimum wages and barriers to foreign goods won't create jobs if robots can do them.

But this is not an anti-technology book; to borrow Pope Francis's phrase from Laudato Si', it's an anti-technocratic-paradigm book. In his encyclical, Francis insists that technology itself is not bad, but that it becomes problematic when it becomes an end in itself - which, as he goes on to say, means an end for those who stand to profit from it. When Francis claims that "technology is not neutral," he means that technological choices are in fact choices about "the kind of society we want." Continue reading

• David Cloutier is associate professor of theology at Mount St. Mary's University and editor of catholicmoraltheology.com

Furthermore, after the synod his close advisers have made clear their expectation that the Holy Father will change the traditional practice, in contradiction to the clear teaching of St John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

That column has been cited as making a stronger claim than it actually did, namely that Pope Francis will certainly make such a change. There is good reason to think that the Holy Father desires to make a change, and that those close to him are indicating how he might do it.

But that Pope Francis might desire a change does not mean that he will actually do it.

We know that Pope Francis is more than capable of acting on his own initiative. On two important occasions he has done just that. His creation of the Secretariat for the Economy was done and announced without the Holy See's secretary of state being informed ahead of time.

The recent motu proprio on annulment reforms was published without the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeing the final draft. So Pope Francis is not shy about acting on his own authority.

Yet popes do not always get what they want.

A relevant example comes from Vatican II, at which Blessed Paul VI was concerned about preserving the independence of the Petrine office.

He proposed that the text of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, include that the pope "is accountable to the Lord alone", signalling that his autonomy was limited by no earthly power, civil or ecclesial.

The council's theological commission, having heard the pope's view, rejected it, noting that "the Roman Pontiff is … bound to revelation itself, to the fundamental structure of the Church, to the sacraments, to the definitions of earlier Councils, and [to] other obligations too numerous to mention." Continue reading

• Fr Raymond de Souza is a priest of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, and editor-in-chief of Convivium magazine.

In an essay he co-authored on subsidiarity, Cardinal Pell wrote about the preferences of some liberal Christians living in countries with more liberal episcopacies.

During the pontificates of St John Paul II and Benedict XVI, such Christians "were often keen to decrease the authority of the Roman Curia and complained about excessive centralisation of decision-making in the Vatican".

"With the advent of a new Pope often estimated (wrongly in our belief) to be a doctrinal liberal, some of these more liberal elements might be more relaxed about Roman leadership," the authors noted.

"[They would be] preferring that to a devolution of wider decision-making powers to a national hierarchy of a more conservative hue."

Continue reading

Papal spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said both canonisations could take place before the end of this year, and Vatican journalists are speculating that both pontiffs could be declared saints at the same ceremony, an event that would bring huge crowds to the Vatican.

Church rules for beatification and canonisation ordinarily require the confirmation of two miracles — one before a candidate is beatified and a second subsequent miracle to qualify for canonisation.

But in the case of "Good Pope John", who convened the Second Vatican Council in 1962, Pope Francis used his authority to dispense with the requirement for a second miracle.

The original miracle due to John XXIII's intercession was the cure of an Italian nun with internal bleeding from ulcers, who was close to death after having three-quarters of her stomach and her spleen removed.

The decision to canonise John Paul II — whose funeral in 2005 rang with chants of "Santo Subito!" (Sainthood now!) — will mean his sainthood is recognised a little more than eight years after his death, faster than for any other person in the modern era.

The first miracle attributed to John Paul II concerned the healing of a French nun from Parkinson's disease, an ailment that also affected the late pope.

The second miracle, now accepted by Pope Francis, involved the healing of a Costa Rican woman whose brain aneurysm disappeared after she prayed to John Paul II.

Floribeth Mora told reporters in San Jose, Costa Rica, that her family built an altar to John Paul II outside her house, and while she was watching the late pope's beatification in 2011 she picked up a magazine and, while looking at a photo of the pope, started to hear a voice.

"It said, 'Get up, don't be afraid,'" Mora said. She stood up and felt instantly better, and a variety of medical exams revealed that her aneurysm had simply disappeared.

Mora showed reporters photos of her brain taken before and after the purported miracle.

Sources:

National Catholic Reporter

Associated Press

Benedictus

Image: St Louis Review