Canonization

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Canonisation
)

Icon of St. Cyprian of Carthage, who urged diligence in the process of canonization

Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint,[1] specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of saints,[2] or authorized list of that communion's recognized saints.[3][4]

Catholic Church

Canonization of Elizabeth of Hungary in 1235. Sándor Liezen-Mayer (1863).

Canonization is a papal declaration that the Catholic faithful may venerate a particular deceased member of the church. Popes began making such decrees in the tenth century. Up to that point, the local bishops governed the veneration of holy men and women within their own dioceses; and there may have been, for any particular saint, no formal decree at all. In subsequent centuries, the procedures became increasingly regularized and the Popes began restricting to themselves the right to declare someone a Catholic saint. In contemporary usage, the term is understood to refer to the act by which any Christian church declares that a person who has died is a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the list of recognized saints, called the "canon".[5]

Biblical roots

In the Roman Martyrology, the following entry is given for the

Penitent Thief: "At Jerusalem, the commemoration of the good Thief, who confessed Christ on the cross, and deserved to hear from Him these words: 'This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise.'[6][7]

Historical development

The Roman Rite's Canon of the Mass contains only the names of apostles and martyrs, along with that of the Blessed Virgin Mary and, since 1962, that of Saint Joseph her spouse.

By the fourth century, however, "confessors"—people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by word and life—began to be venerated publicly. Examples of such people are Saint Hilarion and Saint Ephrem the Syrian in the East, and Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Hilary of Poitiers in the West. Their names were inserted in the diptychs, the lists of saints explicitly venerated in the liturgy, and their tombs were honoured in like manner as those of the martyrs. Since the witness of their lives was not as unequivocal as that of the martyrs, they were venerated publicly only with the approval by the local bishop. This process is often referred to as "local canonization".[9]

This approval was required even for veneration of a reputed martyr. In his history of the

Saint Optatus recounts that at Carthage a Catholic matron, named Lucilla, incurred the censures of the Church for having kissed the relics of a reputed martyr whose claims to martyrdom had not been juridically proved. And Saint Cyprian
(died 258) recommended that the utmost diligence be observed in investigating the claims of those who were said to have died for the faith. All the circumstances accompanying the martyrdom were to be inquired into; the faith of those who suffered, and the motives that animated them were to be rigorously examined, in order to prevent the recognition of undeserving persons. Evidence was sought from the court records of the trials or from people who had been present at the trials.

suffragan
bishops, declared whether the deceased was worthy of the name of "martyr" and public veneration.

Though not "canonizations" in the narrow sense, acts of formal recognition, such as the erection of an altar over the saint's tomb or transferring the saint's relics to a church, were preceded by formal inquiries into the sanctity of the person's life and the miracles attributed to that person's intercession.

Such acts of recognition of a saint were authoritative, in the strict sense, only for the diocese or ecclesiastical province for which they were issued, but with the spread of the fame of a saint, were often accepted elsewhere also.

Nature

In the

Apostolic See and occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that the candidate for canonization lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that they are worthy to be recognized as a saint. The Church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the person is now in Heaven and that they may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the Church, including in the Litany of the Saints
.

In the Catholic Church, canonization is a decree that allows universal veneration of the saint. For permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed.[10]

Procedure prior to reservation to the Apostolic See

Pope Pius II canonizes Catherine of Siena.

For several centuries the bishops, or in some places only the primates and patriarchs,[11] could grant martyrs and confessors public ecclesiastical honor; such honor, however, was always decreed only for the local territory of which the grantors had jurisdiction. Only acceptance of the cultus by the Pope made the cultus universal, because he alone can rule the universal Catholic Church.[12] Abuses, however, crept into this discipline, due as well to indiscretions of popular fervor as to the negligence of some bishops in inquiring into the lives of those whom they permitted to be honoured as saints.

In the Medieval West, the

Saint Udalric, Bishop of Augsburg by Pope John XV in 993 was the first undoubted example of papal canonization of a saint from outside of Rome being declared worthy of liturgical veneration for the entire church.[13]

Thereafter, recourse to the judgment of the

conformed to this discipline.

Exclusive reservation to the Apostolic See

Archbishop of Rouen, canonized Walter of Pontoise, or St. Gaultier, in 1153, the final saint in Western Europe to be canonized by an authority other than the Pope:[14][15] "The last case of canonization by a metropolitan is said to have been that of St. Gaultier, or Gaucher, [A]bbot of Pontoise, by the Archbishop of Rouen. A decree of Pope Alexander III [in] 1170 gave the prerogative to the [P]ope thenceforth, so far as the Western Church was concerned."[14] In a decretal of 1173, Pope Alexander III reprimanded some bishops for permitting veneration of a man who was merely killed while intoxicated, prohibited veneration of the man, and most significantly decreed that "you shall not therefore presume to honor him in the future; for, even if miracles were worked through him, it is not lawful for you to venerate him as a saint without the authority of the Catholic Church."[16] Theologians disagree as to the full import of the decretal of Pope Alexander III: either a new law was instituted,[17] in which case the Pope
then for the first time reserved the right of beatification to himself, or an existing law was confirmed.

However, the procedure initiated by the decretal of

Apostolic See both its immemorial right of canonization and that of beatification
. He further regulated both of these acts by issuing his Decreta servanda in beatificatione et canonizatione Sanctorum on 12 March 1642.

Procedure from 1734 to 1738 to 1983

In his De Servorum Dei beatificatione et de Beatorum canonizatione of five volumes the eminent canonist Prospero Lambertini (1675–1758), who later became

Beatification and canonization process in 1914" describes the procedures followed until the promulgation of the Codex of 1917. The substance of De Servorum Dei beatifιcatione et de Beatorum canonizatione was incorporated into the Codex Iuris Canonici (Code of Canon Law) of 1917,[18] which governed until the promulgation of the revised Codex Iuris Canonici in 1983 by Pope John Paul II. Prior to promulgation of the revised Codex in 1983, Pope Paul VI
initiated a simplification of the procedures.

Since 1983

The

Congregation for the Causes of Saints on 7 February 1983 to implement the constitution in dioceses, continued the simplification of the process initiated by Pope Paul VI.[19] Contrary to popular belief, the reforms did not eliminate the office of the Promoter of the Faith (Latin: Promotor Fidei), popularly known as the Devil's advocate, whose office is to question the material presented in favor of canonization. The reforms were intended to reduce the adversarial nature of the process. In November 2012 Pope Benedict XVI appointed Monsignor Carmello Pellegrino as Promoter of the Faith.[20]

Candidates for canonization undergo the following process:

  1. For a non-martyr, all of them being denominated "confessors" because they "confessed", i.e., bore witness to the Faith by how they lived, proof is required of the occurrence of a miracle through the intercession of the Venerable; that is, that God granted a sign that the person is enjoying the beatific vision
by performing a miracle for which the Venerable interceded. Presently, these miracles are almost always miraculous cures of infirmity, because these are the easiest to judge given the Church's evidentiary requirements for miracles; e.g., a patient was sick with an illness for which no cure was known; prayers were directed to the Venerable; the patient was cured; the cure was spontaneous, instantaneous, complete, and enduring; and physicians cannot discover any natural explanation for the cure.
The satisfaction of the applicable conditions permits
Congregation for the Causes of Saints all agree that the Blessed lived a life of great merit proven by certain actions. This extraordinary procedure was used in Pope Francis' canonization of Pope John XXIII, who convoked the first part of the Second Vatican Council
.

Canonization is a statement of the Church that the person certainly enjoys the beatific vision of

feast day which may be celebrated anywhere in the universal Church, although it is not necessarily added to the General Roman Calendar
or local calendars as an "obligatory" feast; parish churches may be erected in their honor; and the faithful may freely celebrate and honor the saint.

Although recognition of sainthood by the

Divine revelation, nonetheless it must be "definitively held" by the faithful as infallible pursuant to, at the least, the Universal Magisterium of the Church, because it is a truth related to revelation by historical necessity.[26][27]

Regarding the

sui juris churches have the right to "glorify" saints for their own jurisdictions, although this has rarely happened.[citation needed
]

Equipollent canonization

Popes have several times permitted to the universal Church, without executing the ordinary judicial process of canonization described above, the veneration as a saint, the "cultus" of one long venerated as such locally. This act of a Pope is denominated "equipollent" or "equivalent canonization"[28] and "confirmation of cultus".[29] In such cases, there is no need to have a miracle attributed to the saint to allow their canonization.[28] According to the rules Pope Benedict XIV (regnat 17 August 1740 – 3 May 1758) instituted, there are three conditions for an equipollent canonization: (1) existence of an ancient cultus of the person, (2) a general and constant attestation to the virtues or martyrdom of the person by credible historians, and (3) uninterrupted fame of the person as a worker of miracles.

Protestant denominations

The majority of Protestant denominations do not formally recognize saints because the Bible uses the term in a way that suggests all Christians are saints. However, some denominations do, as shown below.

Anglican Communion

The

Mother Church of the Anglican Communion, canonized Charles I as a saint, in the Convocations of Canterbury and York of 1660.[30]

United Methodist Church

The

General Conference of the United Methodist Church has formally declared individuals martyrs, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer (in 2008) and Martin Luther King Jr. (in 2012).[31][32]

Eastern Orthodox Church

The Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria (1876). On 3 April 2011, Batak massacre victims were canonized as saints.
Great fire of Smyrna in 1922.[33][34]

Various terms are used for canonization by the

Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church
).

The Orthodox Church in America, an Eastern Orthodox Church partly recognized as autocephalous, uses the term "glorification" for the official recognition of a person as a saint.[39]

Oriental Orthodox Church

Within the Armenian Apostolic Church, part of Oriental Orthodoxy, there had been discussions since the 1980s about canonizing the victims of the Armenian genocide.[40] On 23 April 2015, all of the victims of the genocide were canonized.[41][42][43]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "canonize". Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 6 July 2020.
  2. ^ Charles Annandale. The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language, Volume 1; 1905. P. 386. Canon – A catalogue of saints acknowledged and canonized in the Roman Catholic Church.
  3. ^ CANON // Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3; 1913. – P. 255–256. – The name Canon (κανών) means a norm or rule; and it is used for various objects, such as the Canon of Holy Scripture, canons of Councils, the official list of saints' names (whence "canonization"), and the canon or list of clerks who serve a certain church, from which they themselves are called canons (canonici).
  4. ^ "Canonization". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 6 July 2020.
  5. ISSN 1478-0542
    .
  6. ^ "Laudate Dominum—Roman Martyrology--March".
  7. ^ Clark, John (3 April 2015). "Canonized from the Cross: How St Dismas Shows it's Never Too Late..." Seton Magazine. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  8. ^ Kemp (1948).
  9. ^ For the history of such canonization, see Kemp.[8]
  10. ^ "Beatification, in the present discipline, differs from canonization in this: that the former implies (1) a locally restricted, not a universal, permission to venerate, which is (2) a mere permission, and no precept; while canonization implies a universal precept" (Beccari, Camillo. "Beatification and Canonization". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. Accessed 27 May 2009.).
  11. ^ August., Brevic. Collat. cum Donatistis, III, 13, no. 25 in PL, XLIII, 628.
  12. ^ Gonzalez Tellez, Comm. Perpet. in singulos textus libr. Decr., III, xlv, in Cap. 1, De reliquiis et vener. Sanct.
  13. S2CID 159681002
    .
  14. ^ a b "William Smith and Samuel Cheetham, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities (Murray, 1875), p. 283". Boston, Little. Retrieved 4 October 2014.
  15. ^ "Pope Alexander III". Archived from the original on 15 October 2013. Retrieved 4 October 2014.
  16. ^ Pope Gregory IX, Decretales, 3, "De reliquiis et veneratione sanctorum". It is alternatively quoted as follows: "For the future you will not presume to pay him reverence, as, even though miracles were worked through him, it would not allow you to revere him as a saint unless with the authority of the Roman Church". (C. 1, tit. cit., X, III, xlv.)
  17. ^ St. Robert Bellarmine, De Eccles. Triumph., I, 8.
  18. ^ "Aimable Musoni, "Saints without Borders", pp. 9–10" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 February 2020. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
  19. ^ a b "Divinus Perfectionis Magister". The Holy See. Retrieved 4 October 2014.
  20. ^ ""Devil's Advocate Is Puglia: 'It will test the virtues of aspiring saints'", la Repubblica, 5 November 2012". 5 November 2012.
  21. ^ Pope John Paul II, Divinus Perfectionis Magister (25 January 1983), Art. 1, Sec. 1.
  22. ^ Pietro Cardinal Palazzini, Norms to be observed in inquiries made by bishops in the causes of saints, 1983 Archived 22 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine, §9(a).
  23. ^ Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910–1997), Biography, Office of Papal Liturgical Celebrations, Internet Office of the Holy See
  24. ^ "Sister Lucia's Beatification Process to Begin". ZENIT – The World Seen from Rome. Archived from the original on 27 September 2012. Retrieved 4 October 2014.
  25. ^ Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei, by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
  26. ^ "Beatification and Canonization", The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 2. New York, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. p. 366.
  27. ^ a b EWTN. "Pope Francis declares blind 14th-century lay Dominican a saint". CNA. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
  28. ^ "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Beatification and Canonization". www.newadvent.org. Archived from the original on 16 January 2000. Retrieved 24 April 2021. Those proposed as coming under the definition of cases excepted (casus excepti) by Urban VIII are treated in another way. In such cases it must be proved that an immemorial public veneration (at least for 100 years before the promulgation, in 1640, of the decrees of Urban VIII) has been paid the servant of God, whether confessor or martyr. Such cause is proposed under the title of "confirmation of veneration" (de confirmatione cultus); it is dealt with in an ordinary meeting of the Congregation of Rites.
  29. . In 1660 the convocations of Canterbury and York canonized King Charles.
  30. Dallas News
    . Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  31. ^ Mulenga, Maidstone (1 May 2012). "United Methodists declare MLK Jr. a modern-day martyr". United Methodist Church. Archived from the original on 23 September 2017. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  32. ^ Αγ. Χρυσόστομος Σμύρνης Archived 21 July 2011 at archive.today. Municipality of Triglia. Retrieved: 7 September 2012.
  33. ^ (in Greek) Κων/τίνος Β. Χιώλος. "Ο μαρτυρικός θάνατος του Μητροπολίτου Σμύρνης Archived 12 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine". Δημοσια Κεντρικη Βιβλιοθηκη Σερρων. Τετάρτη, 13 Σεπτεμβρίου 2006.
  34. ^ "Почему был канонизирован Николай Второй?" by Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev at Pravmir.ru (17 July 2009)
  35. ^ ""Прославление святых – это не дело узкого круга специалистов, это дело всей Церкви" by Julija Birjukova at Pravmir.ru (9 Dec. 2013)".
  36. Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky
  37. Dictionary of Modern Greek
    , Athens: Lexicology Centre, 1998, p. 53.
  38. ^ "The Glorification of Saints in the Orthodox Church" Archived 8 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine by Fr. Joseph Frawley
  39. ^ Roberta R. Ervine, Worship Traditions in Armenia and the Neighboring Christian East, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006, p. 346 n. 17.
  40. ^ Davlashyan, Naira. "Armenian Church makes saints of 1.5 million genocide victims". Yahoo News. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  41. ^ "Armenian Genocide victims canonized in Holy Etchmiadzin". Panarmenian.Net. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  42. ^ "Canonized: Armenian Church proclaims collective martyrdom of Genocide victims – Genocide". ArmeniaNow.com. Archived from the original on 29 July 2020. Retrieved 23 April 2015.

References

  • Kemp, Eric Waldram (1948), Canonization and Authority in the Western Church, Oxford: Oxford University Press

External links

Catholic Church