Saint Makers

All they need are two miracles, connections in Rome-and plenty of cash.

By Brendan I. Koerner

The doctors had little hope of restoring Robert Gutherman's ravaged hearing. The year was 1974, and a bone-dissolving infection had rendered the 14-year-old deaf in his right ear. Resigned to the permanency of her son's hearing loss, his mother only wanted the suffering to end; the agony caused by the infection was so great that Robert was forced to sleep with his head on a hot-water bottle to dull the pain.

With medical science powerless to help, his mother called the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, whose convent was near the Guthermans' home in Bensalem, Pa. The nuns encouraged the family to pray to Katharine Drexel, their order's founder, who died in 1955. Drexel, the sisters said, could intercede with God on Robert's behalf, easing his torment.

One night, scared and alone in his Philadelphia hospital bed, Robert prayed to Mother Katharine, at whose chapel he'd once served as an altar boy. When he awoke the next morning, the pain was gone-and his hearing was once again perfect.

"When I went back for a checkup, [the doctor] was looking in my ear and he said, 'I can't believe what I'm seeing,' " recalls Gutherman, now 39. " 'His body is healing itself.' " In the records, the doctor wrote: "Is this possible?"

The recovery was just what the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament had been waiting for. In 1964, the order had formally begun the process of having Drexel declared a saint, a mammoth undertaking requiring evidence of two posthumous miracles as proof of the candidate's favored place in heaven. In 1988, after years of investigation - testimony by physicians, analysis of X-rays, study by a Vatican medical board-the church judged Robert's healing miraculous. With a second miracle now nearing approval in Rome, Drexel is on track to become the next American saint, perhaps this year.

Drexel stands the closest to canonization of America's 29 candidates for sainthood. Most on the list are still decades-even centuries-away from receiving a halo. The path to sainthood may be the world's most complex, drawn out legal process, putting any large-scale class-action suit to shame.

It requires years of toil by tireless supporters blessed with Job-like patience-along with good public relations, ample cash to fund the campaign, and a dash of political savvy. "I don't want to be cynical about this, but it helps a lot if you have connections in Rome," says Lawrence Cunningham, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. "And it helps a lot if you can come up with the bucks."

Above all, it requires faith, for scant few of those who dedicate their lives to a candidate will live to see whether the cause succeeds, or becomes one of the quae silent-"the silent ones," the causes on behalf of people whose applications for sainthood end up languishing forever in the Vatican's musty archives.

Good signs. Despite the daunting nature of the process, supporters of America's potential saints are riding a crest of optimism. Pope John Paul II, who will visit St. Louis later this month, has canonized more people - 280 at last count - more than all of his 20th-century predecessors combined. "And a lot of those 280 are not European," notes Father James Wiseman, an associate professor of theology at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. "He really wants to expand the church beyond something that is seen as too narrowly European. He's trying to show that holiness has blossomed in all corners of the world and to give encouragement to the young churches."

The American church, minuscule until the arrival of mid-19th-century immigrants, is certainly young. And with only four Americans on the liturgical calendar-and only one of those, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, native born-many feel the nation's 61.2 million Catholics are due more American models of Christian virtue and sanctity.

Under past pontiffs, "American Catholics haven't thought of saints as something here among us," says Father Gabriel O'Donnell, a Dominican who is postulator-half chief researcher, half chief lobbyist - for the cause of Father Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus. Part of the problem is that Americans have long had an incorrect idea of the church's notion of sainthood, says Father Peter Gumpel, a member of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican's saint-making body. Rather than limiting its scope to prophets and stigmatics, the church in the post-Second Vatican Council era is looking for those who "have done their duty constantly, joyfully . . . a person who prayed, who was charitable to others."

Each of the 29 American candidates is revered, at least in small circles, for having lived according to these ideals. There is, for example, Father Nelson Baker, a Lackawanna, N.Y., priest known as the "Padre of the Poor" for his work with homeless boys. Or Father Samuel Mazzuchelli, an Italian-born Dominican priest who ministered to 19th-century settlers in Wisconsin and Iowa. Or Mother Angeline Teresa McCrory, founder of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, which runs homes for the elderly.

Such good works and reputations for holiness are indispensable to any canonization cause. But a life of exemplary virtue and piety is hardly enough. After the candidate has died - the first prerequisite - his or her supporters must be prepared for an agonizingly long, often frustrating trek toward sainthood. It begins a minimum of five years after the potential saint's death, at which time a petition can be submitted to Rome appealing for a "cause" (the term used to refer to each case) to be opened.

Such petitions rarely come quickly; it takes time to ensure the person's reputation for holiness survives. Father McGivney's cause was not formally opened until 1997, 107 years after his death. The cause of Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian convert to Catholicism, did not begin until 1932, 252 years after her death at the age of 24.

Close scrutiny. Once the Vatican declares it has no objections to the cause's moving forward-a formality that includes the bestowal of the title "Servant of God" upon the candidate-the research begins. Every nook and cranny of the person's life must be examined in excruciating detail, and for good reason; the pope's decision to canonize is considered infallible, and a mistake could prove incredibly embarrassing. "They don't want to go back afterwards and find out the guy had a mistress and entertained thoughts of becoming a Rosicrucian," says Notre Dame's Cunningham.

A large part of this vetting includes a review of the candidate's religious writings by Roman censors, who hunt for inconsistencies with church teachings. Because of the high level of scrutiny, "you tend not to get [saints] who are big on theological speculation," says Cunningham. "You tend to get people who are a little bit more safe." St. Augustine, who lived with a woman out of wedlock, might never be canonized today. Many believe that Dorothy Day, founder of the charity Catholic Worker, will never be sainted because of her sexually licentious youth and outspoken pacifism.

If witnesses are alive, they are called to testify before a tribunal of bishops, priests, and nuns. In the case of Mother McCrory, who passed away in 1984, up to 70 witnesses will eventually be summoned. Obtaining testimony can be tough; many witnesses are aged or ailing, or must travel far to attend the tribunal. For the cause of Mother Maria Kaupas, a Lithuanian-born nun who founded the Chicago-based Sisters of St. Casimir, witnesses in Lithuania were interviewed in secret in the late 1980s and their testimony smuggled back to the United States by a visiting priest; the sisters feared persecution and arrest by Soviet authorities.

More often than not, however, reconstructing a potential saint's life story is a matter of sifting through mountains of documents. Over 1,000 of Mother Maria's letters had to be translated from Lithuanian into English, a task that took over nine years. Father O'Donnell and a colleague have gone through every single newspaper published in the New Haven, Conn., area between 1875 and 1890, to reconstruct Father McGivney's whereabouts week to week. "There aren't enough hours in the day," sighs Father O'Donnell, who has attended a five-month "sainthood class" at the Vatican.

Once all the possible evidence has been collected, it is time for the positio, or position paper. "Writing the positio is like writing a doctoral thesis," says Sister Margaret Petcavage, Mother Maria Kaupas's vice postulator. The first section is dedicated to the candidate's biography, the second to documentation of the candidate's virtues-letters, writings, and eyewitness accounts attesting to piety, faith, and charity.

The academic work of positio writing is often accompanied by the much grimmer task of exhuming the candidate's corpse. Especially in cases of the long deceased, the church requires proof that the person actually existed. "Rome wanted assurances that these were the real remains of Pierre Toussaint, and not just a bunch of bones," says Msgr. Robert O'Connell, vice postulator for Toussaint, a 19th-century New York City layman famed for his charity toward orphans and cholera victims. In 1990, a forensics team spent 15 days excavating his Manhattan grave, using computer imaging to match the skull to an antique photo of Toussaint, before reinterring the remains beneath the main altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

After the positio is submitted, the writings judged free of dogmatic error, and the remains reinterred, it is up to the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, consisting of around 25 cardinals and bishops, to determine whether the candidate lived a life of heroic virtue. If the committee and the pope approve, the candidate is given the title "Venerable." At this point, debate over the person's Earthly existence is over, and the search for two posthumous miracles begins.

The first miracle earns the candidate beatification and the title "Blessed"; the second miracle, canonization and "Saint." It is a crusade that requires a touch of public relations: The sick and distressed must be encouraged to pray to a potential saint. The most popular strategy for getting the word out is through prayer guilds, which publish newsletters reporting on the cause's progress and listing favors received. The summer 1998 issue of the quarterly Lily of the Mohawks, published by the 4,000-member Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha League, features letters from those who say their friends and relatives have been healed of brain cancer and curvature of the spine through Kateri's intercession.

The "Favors Received" section of the October 1998 issue of the Sister Miriam Teresa League of Prayer Bulletin lists: "Improved health, husband's recovery, tests that reveal no cancer, dental health, birth of a healthy baby, healing of infection in a diabetic, success in examinations, sale of boat." Others use slide shows, school lectures, and educational videos to heighten their candidate's visibility. "We got a tremendous amount of press coverage when we were digging to exhume [Toussaint]," says Monsignor O'Connell. "We got thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of free publicity."

Clearing the bar.

Supporters sort through the reported favors and investigate only the most convincing. The Vatican standard for miracles is extremely high: A board of five doctors, notoriously exacting, must conclude that no reasonable medical explanation exists for a healing. "Some things that looked pretty miraculous to me were not very good in the eyes of Rome," says Father John Paret, vice postulator for Kateri's cause. He has had three proposed miracles rejected; one, regarding a priest who regained vision in one eye after praying to Kateri, was unacceptable because only 90 percent of his sight was restored.

"We do not accept any cure as a miracle unless we are scientifically, humanly certain that the cure has been instantaneous, not expected, and complete," says Gumpel. "If God intervenes and works a miracle, he doesn't do it halfway." Some miracles, he adds, are "better" than others. The overnight healing of, say, a third-degree burn is much easier to verify than a complete recovery from cancer. "Especially in cancer cases, we require a period of 10 years to see whether the illness will come again, because cancer can go into remission," he says.

Miracles, all agree, are completely in God's hands. But more worldly matters-"who you know" and the right political climate-can help determine whether a candidate lands on the fast track. Gumpel admits that Drexel's cause has proceeded quickly thanks to the personal interest taken by Cardinal Anthony Joseph Bevilacqua, archbishop of Philadelphia and a member of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The pope also has some leeway to accelerate the causes of his favorites; for example, he waived the first miracle for Kateri Tekakwitha, paving the way for her beatification in 1980.

Candidate backers on the whole defend the process as democratic, but many acknowledge the political angle; Pope John Paul II is known to play favorites. He has also focused on some controversial candidates. In October, he canonized Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who died at Auschwitz; he did so over the objections of Jewish leaders, who termed the move an insult, an attempt to Christianize the suffering of the Holocaust.

There is also talk of fast-tracking the causes of Pope Pius XII, who some accuse of funneling Nazi gold through the Vatican's coffers, and Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, condemned by Serbs as a war criminal for his ties to Croatian fascists.

The current pope is especially keen on canonizing persons of color, particularly laypersons, to balance out the church's mostly white, clerical-heavy roster of saints. He added 117 Vietnamese martyrs to the calendar in 1988 and has also given Nigeria and Papua New Guinea their first saints. Sister Margaret thinks that Mother Maria Kaupas's cause may hold an unusual political ace of its own: "We think [her canonization] is most probable, because the pope's mother is Lithuanian."

Cash plays a key role as well, though most church officials downplay the importance of a sizable bankroll. "Causes cost money," says Father Gumpel. "But . . . if a cause hasn't got the money, we find funds. In nearly 40 years, I have never seen a single cause being delayed or put off because there was a lack of money." Still, expenses start to mount as the years roll by: trips to Rome, printing newsletters, office supplies. Once the case hits the Vatican, members of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and the doctors on the medical board must be paid for their work.

In the event of beatification or canonization, there can be sizable expenses associated with the ceremonial masses. The 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia is forthright about the cost: "The expenses of the process from beatification to canonization will easily exceed $30,000"-about $500,000 today.

Sainthoods and miracles cannot be bought, but money does have a way of expediting the process, by easing the research and positio-writing phases. Some ascribe the record-setting beatification of José María Escrivá de Balaguer-a mere 17 years after his 1975 death-to the financial resources of the organization he founded, Opus Dei, a secretive group known for its ultraconservatism. "They had enough money to have a large staff, to have the latest machines," says Sister Eileen Dolan, one of only two nuns working full time on the cause of Sister Miriam Teresa, a mystic who wrote famed tracts on spirituality. "We're working on a dinky little word processor."

Back to the Home Page