Question 16 – Can a Pope Make a Mistake About Making Someone a Saint?

Transcript:

No. There is not yet a church teaching, which is an infallible teaching of the Magisterium, which says that the canonizations are per se, infallible teachings of the Church. This does not exist. It is only a theological opinion of the theologians. So, we have to distinguish these very carefully. And since it is not yet proclaimed as the truth of faith, we are not obliged to believe. When someone is canonized, of course, prudentially, we have to accept this simply entrusting the Church authority. But it says that there were cases in the history of the church where some saints who were on the list of the official saints in the Martyrologium Romanum, in the martyrology, disappeared.

And so, it cannot be a revealed truth of the faith of God, because God did not reveal in the Church that a concrete person is now in heaven or there is a concrete person in hell. There is no divine revelation, specifically. There is also no divine revelation that a concrete person has lived heroically. So, it is a prudential judgment of the Church after a careful process on the virtues, for example. I repeat, there were cases where saints were venerated, but then, after some research, some centuries later it was discovered that the saint did not exist in the Middle Ages and so on. Then this name was canceled from Roman martyrology. The Roman Martyrology, the list of the saints, was composed by Cardinal Caesar Baronius in the 16th century in Rome, a historian. A couple of saints whom today we still have in martyrology were simply added by Cardinal Baronius without any process. Simply, he added these saints, and the Pope gave his approval. And so, there are different situations.

 The most famous case is St. Philomena, who was venerated so much by St. Jean-Marie Vianney of Ars. Even, she appeared to him, and he made some miracles through the intercession of the saint. Then, in the 19th century, the Pope approved mass formulas and divine office in honor of St. Philomena. In the 20th century, historians made inquiries and said that this saint did not exist. So, Pope John XXIII removed St. Philomena from every liturgical veneration. In the new martyrology of John Paul II, this saint simply disappeared. So, you see here that this is not an infallible issue when some saints suddenly are canceled from the list. It is a prudential judgment of the Church. But I repeat, in the usual cases, we can trust in this, and invoke the Saints. St. Thomas Aquinas says, “Even if we would invoke a saint, who did not exist or are ‘wrong saints’, our veneration goes always to God, not to the saint. The last recipient of the veneration is not the saint, but it's always God. Therefore, all the prayers ultimately arrive in God, and God concedes His graces. And so, we have to distinguish these different situations in the history of the canonizations also.