How Are Saints Canonized?

Inside the process the Church built to be difficult on purpose

A canonization cause can fill archives with sworn testimony, historical records, theological evaluations, medical documentation, and years of formal review. This is what the process looks like from the inside — not a quick papal decree, but a deliberately careful investigation that can take decades, and sometimes centuries, before the Catholic Church reaches a judgment that a person should be canonized as a saint.

This article builds on our pillar guide, Who Are the Saints and Why Do Catholics Pray to Them?, which introduces sainthood and intercession more broadly. Here, the focus is narrow and practical: how does someone actually become a canonized saint, what has to be proven, and who makes the final call?

Canonization is the solemn act by which the Catholic Church declares a deceased Christian to be a saint and proposes that person for veneration throughout the Church. Popular guides often summarize a typical cause through four familiar titles — Servant of God, Venerable, Blessed, and Saint — although the Church's actual legal procedure is more nuanced than a simple four-step ladder. For a non-martyr whose cause is based on heroic virtue, one approved miracle is ordinarily required for beatification and another, occurring after beatification, for canonization; martyrs and some exceptional cases follow different rules.

Four Familiar Titles in a Canonization Cause

Popular explanations often describe a modern Catholic cause through four familiar titles: Servant of God, Venerable, Blessed, and Saint. That sequence is useful for understanding a typical cause based on heroic virtue, but it is not a complete map of every juridical route. Martyrdom follows a different path at important points, and since 2017 the Church has also recognized a distinct cause based on the offering of life.

These titles still provide a useful guide to where many causes stand. A Blessed has been beatified but is not yet canonized for universal veneration. A person called Venerable has received papal recognition connected with heroic virtue or, where applicable, the offering-of-life route, but has not yet been beatified.

An important exception: the offering of life. In 2017 Pope Francis established a distinct route for a person who freely and voluntarily offers their life out of Christian charity and accepts a certain and premature death. This route is explicitly separate from martyrdom and heroic virtue. It requires, among other criteria, a reputation for holiness and a miracle attributed to the person's intercession for beatification.

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Stage One: The Diocesan Investigation

A cause for canonization normally begins only after a waiting period following the candidate's death, intended to allow an initial reputation for holiness to be tested over time rather than judged in the emotion immediately surrounding a death. The pope can waive the normal waiting period. Pope Benedict XVI did so in 2005 for the cause of Pope John Paul II, allowing it to begin only weeks after John Paul II's death.

The process itself normally begins in the diocese connected with the candidate's death. A petitioner promotes the cause through a legitimately appointed postulator, whose appointment requires the bishop's approval. The diocesan inquiry gathers testimony, biographical evidence, published writings, unpublished documents, and other material relevant to the person's life, virtues or martyrdom, and reputation for holiness. The candidate's writings are subjected to the theological and historical scrutiny required by the Church's norms. Once the cause is formally introduced, the candidate is commonly referred to as a Servant of God. When the diocesan inquiry closes, its acts are sent to Rome for examination by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

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Stage Two: Declared Venerable

In Rome, the acts are examined by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican department responsible for causes of beatification and canonization. The material is studied by the appropriate historical and theological experts and then by the Dicastery's members before conclusions are presented to the pope. In an ordinary cause based on virtue, the central question at this point is whether the Servant of God practiced the Christian virtues to a heroic degree.

When the pope authorizes a decree recognizing heroic virtues, the Servant of God is commonly given the title Venerable. The title may also be used in the distinct offering-of-life route once its requirements have received papal recognition. This is not beatification and does not itself authorize the public veneration proper to a Blessed. Martyr causes proceed differently: once martyrdom has been recognized, a martyr may proceed to beatification without the miracle ordinarily required in causes based on heroic virtue or offering of life.

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Stage Three: Beatification and the First Miracle

For a cause based on heroic virtue or offering of life, beatification ordinarily requires a miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession after death. A recognized martyr may be beatified without this miracle. When an alleged healing is proposed, a diocesan inquiry first gathers the medical records, testimony, and other evidence. In Rome, a board of medical experts evaluates whether the healing can be explained scientifically; theologians separately examine whether it is connected with prayer for the candidate's intercession.

The conclusions then pass through the Dicastery's further review before being presented to the pope. If the required decrees are authorized, beatification permits the candidate to be publicly venerated as Blessed within the places, communities, or circumstances established by the Church, rather than automatically throughout the universal Church.

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Stage Four: Canonization and the Second Miracle

The final stage requires a second miracle, investigated by the same rigorous method as the first, but this time the healing must have occurred after the beatification itself — a further layer of scrutiny meant to confirm the pattern rather than rely on a single unusual case. Once this second miracle clears every stage of examination and receives papal approval, the pope proceeds with canonization, formally declaring the Blessed to be a Saint and extending the saint's public veneration to the universal Church, not merely one diocese or community.

From this point forward, the saint may be honored publicly throughout the Catholic Church, invoked in the Church's prayer, and commemorated liturgically according to the applicable calendar and liturgical norms. Canonization does not mean that every saint automatically receives a universal obligatory feast day. This is the formal conclusion of a process that, depending on the case, may have taken anywhere from a handful of years to several centuries.

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What Actually Counts as a Miracle

Medical healings are especially common among the miracles examined in modern causes because they can be documented and assessed by specialists. In Rome, a board of medical experts studies the clinical record and evaluates whether the recovery has an adequate scientific explanation. Their task is medical, not theological.

Only after the medical question has been examined does the cause move to theological evaluation of the alleged miracle. The theologians consider whether the event is linked to prayers specifically asking for the candidate's intercession. The case then proceeds through the Dicastery's remaining review before any decree on the miracle is presented for papal authorization.

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Where This Process Came From

For much of the first millennium, recognition of saints developed primarily through local Christian veneration rather than through the centralized papal procedure familiar today. Martyrs were commemorated by the communities that preserved their memory, and bishops played an important role in regulating local cults. Over time, confessors, ascetics, bishops, and other Christians renowned for holiness also came to be publicly venerated.

Papal involvement became increasingly important during the Middle Ages. Saint Ulrich of Augsburg, who died in 973 and was recognized by Pope John XV at a Roman synod in 993, is often identified as the earliest recorded example of a formal papal canonization. During the following centuries, authority over canonization became increasingly reserved to the papacy. Pope Sixtus V entrusted causes to the Congregation of Sacred Rites in 1588, and later reforms — especially those associated with Urban VIII and the canonical scholarship of Prospero Lambertini, the future Benedict XIV — helped shape the rigorous Roman procedure inherited by the modern Church.

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The Devil's Advocate and the 1983 Reform

For centuries, the official popularly known as the Devil's Advocate — formally the Promoter of the Faith — represented the skeptical side of a canonization cause, raising objections and testing the evidence presented in favor of the candidate. The office was not hostile to sainthood; its purpose was to ensure that testimony, virtues, martyrdom, and alleged miracles could withstand serious challenge. Prospero Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV, served for many years as Promoter of the Faith, and his monumental work on beatification and canonization became a foundational reference for later procedure.

Pope John Paul II substantially reformed the process in 1983 through the apostolic constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister. The older courtroom-like adversarial structure was replaced by a procedure centered more heavily on documented historical investigation, relators, theological consultors, and specialist review. But the Promoter of the Faith was not simply abolished: the 1983 constitution retained a Promoter of the Faith, or Prelate Theologian, with defined responsibilities in the theological examination of causes. What disappeared was the older role in its classic adversarial form, not the Church's expectation of critical scrutiny.

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When the Ordinary Process Does Not Apply: Equipollent Canonization

Not every saint entered the universal calendar through today's ordinary route. Equipollent, or equivalent, canonization is an exceptional form in which the pope extends universal liturgical veneration without the ordinary formal canonization process and ceremonies. It is not simply a shortcut granted because a figure is old or popular. Classical Catholic criteria include an ancient and continuous cult, reliable historical testimony to heroic virtue or martyrdom, and an enduring reputation for miracles or favors attributed to the person's intercession.

Saint Gregory VII is among the historical examples associated with this form of recognition. More broadly, many saints from antiquity and the early medieval Church were already venerated long before the modern juridical process existed, so their recognition cannot be described through today's ordinary sequence of titles, investigations, and miracle decrees. Saint Benedict, for example, belongs to that much older world of Christian veneration. The same distinction matters for biblical saints such as Mary Magdalene: their status as saints does not depend on having passed through the modern four-title sequence.

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How the Orthodox Church Recognizes Its Saints

The Eastern Orthodox Churches also formally recognize saints, often using the English term glorification. Orthodoxy emphasizes that the Church does not manufacture holiness: recognition acknowledges a person whom God has glorified. Unlike Catholicism, however, Eastern Orthodoxy has no single worldwide tribunal or pope with universal jurisdiction over every cause, so procedures belong to the competent autocephalous Church and synod.

That does not mean there is no investigation. In the Orthodox Church in America, for example, a request normally comes through the diocesan bishop; a canonization commission researches the person's life and submits its findings to the Holy Synod, which decides whether the person should be numbered among the saints. Liturgical texts are composed, an icon is prepared, a commemoration date is established, and the other Orthodox Churches are notified. Miracles may contribute to a reputation for holiness, but there is no Catholic-style requirement for a fixed number of medically verified miracles.

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Why Protestants Generally Reject the Practice

Most Protestant traditions do not practice canonization in the Catholic sense. They commonly emphasize the New Testament's use of the word saints for Christian communities as a whole and do not accept a later Church process as necessary for identifying certain deceased Christians as objects of public veneration or invocation. The disagreement therefore concerns ecclesial authority, the intercession of departed saints, and the theological meaning of canonization — not simply the mechanics of the Vatican procedure.

Many Protestants nevertheless honor exemplary Christians from earlier centuries and study their lives as models of faith. A Protestant may deeply admire Francis of Assisi, for example, while rejecting the Catholic claim that a formal act of canonization authoritatively establishes universal public veneration of that saint.