Pope John Paul has made many more saints than did his predecessors. The religion editor of Newsweek, author of Making Saints, agrees that the Christian people need above all models of holiness, but has his reservations about the process. AS I write, the relics of St Th?r?se of Lisieux are making their grand tour of the United States. Some 15,000 people stood in line to view them at St Patrick?s Cathedral in New York City. Thousands did the same in Brooklyn, and my wife, among several thousand more, waited for one and a half hours one morning for a three-second viewing in yet another suburban New York church. (She felt cheated because all you can see of the remains is the wooden reliquary, under glass.) So far, more than 100,000 Americans of all ages have lined up for a peek.

It is extraordinary; not only the devotion to this particular cloistered saint but the continuing hold which the cult of the saints retains on the Catholic imagination. One is reminded of the old joke told of Italians: walk down any street in Rome and ask, Do you believe in God? and the answer will be, No, but Mary is his mother. The Second Vatican Council sought to restrain the cult of Mary ? and, by extension, of all saints ? by locating it within a theology of the Church which the council focused more rigorously on the one mediator and saviour, Jesus Christ. But John Paul II, as is now widely known, has worked the saint-making process overtime, canonising and beatifying more candidates than any pope in history. Indeed, his jubilee year 2000 will feature a number of such ceremonies, including the beatification of John XXIII. Perhaps it is time to say that enough is enough.

This proliferation of new saints has a definite bright side. We are all called to holiness, not just to be what my friend Paul Wilkes calls a good enough Catholic. Who wants to be a good enough plumber or journalist, politician or parent? Where?s the challenge in that? To see relative contemporaries canonised reminds us that the call to personal conversion and transformation (which tends to be muffled in Catholicism) is to be heeded by all Christians, not just spiritual athletes. Moreover, every canonisation reminds us (or should) that the communion of saints is real, that we are all implicated in each other?s response to God?s grace.

Finally, I think it a stroke of genius that this Pope has called for a modern martyrology of all Christians to be compiled from throughout the world as part of the jubilee celebration. In doing so, he has rightly emphasised that this century has been one of great suffering, and that true ecumenism is the ecumenism of the martyrs and the saints. In short, the spiritual path by which certain among us have come to a true, unique and exemplary discipleship is a story that we cannot hear too often ? provided it is told honestly and well.

That said, I have some misgivings about the saint-making process. First, the current process has become more like an assembly-line from which important checks and mechanisms of quality control have been removed. Simply put, with the abolition of the office of the Devil?s Advocate, which was the major result of the reform of 1983, there is now no one whose function is systematically to doubt and question a candidate?s worthiness to be declared a saint. Under the reform, any bishop can initiate a process on behalf of any candidate he chooses to support. And, as we saw in the case of Josemar?a Escriv? de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei, any powerful group within the Church can get its candidate thrown into the mix. This threatens the integrity of the process and therefore undermines the credibility of the saints it produces.

Secondly, there is cause for deep concern about the quality of work done by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and about the competence of those who do that work. I have read numerous positios ? to use the technical term for the documentation and arguments put forward on behalf of candidates for sainthood ? and found that they vary widely in quality. I have seen important questions not addressed, pious argument in place of solid evidence, and (as in the classic case of Escriv?) contrary evidence not admitted in the tribunals set up to hear from witnesses to the candidate?s life and virtues.

Regarding the competence of those involved, my observation ? and that of people who work in or with the Vatican congregation ? is that the Church is not attracting scholars of great competence and commitment to replace the best who have given their lives to this important work. So much depends on the relators ? the officials who, like directors of a doctoral dissertation, are primarily responsible for making the case on behalf of the candidates. A relator does not have to be a priest, but he (or she, since the job is not gender-exclusive) should know how to weigh evidence impartially, possess a good historian?s sense of the subject?s life and times and, above all, be willing to argue against a cause if the evidence so indicates. But I know of very few instances in which a relator has had the courage to do so. Their job is to make saints, not break them.

Unlike some other departments of the Vatican, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints can and should seek well-trained lay historians willing to serve the Church in this capacity. But what serious scholar would leave a university post (much less the comforts of academic tenure) to work at the Vatican? There is a crisis within the congregation because of its difficulty in recruiting scholars of quality, which the next pope should tackle.

I would like to see fewer canonisations, coupled with a greater appreciation for beatification. Canonisation should be reserved for those, like Mother Teresa of Calcutta and John XXIII, who have achieved universal recognition. At the same time, beatification ought not to be looked upon as the final step towards something higher. Let it stand, rather, for what it is: exceptional holiness recognised. And let the Blesseds receive their due as regional saints. Martyrdom, in any case, tends to be a local affair, except perhaps when it occurs within a context like the Second World War. Canonisation, therefore, ought to be consequent upon the later discernment of the Church as a whole; that is, only if and when a local saint (a Blessed) develops a wider cult should the Church proceed to canonisation.

A reform such as this would give more meaning to the second miracle of intercession required for canonisation of a non-martyr, or of the first, required for canonisation of a martyr who has been beatified. Since the second miracle must occur after beatification, it is a sign that the Blessed continues to be a source of veneration and intercession; in a word, of a continuing cult. If the first miracle (or martyrdom) is to be read as a divine sign confirming the exceptional holiness of the candidate, the second ought to be read as evidence that the Blessed has achieved the kind of universal recognition by Catholics that only relatively few achieve. This would place the emphasis on the response of the whole people of God rather than, as now, on the efforts of those who are pushing the cause.

The Church?s demand for miracles of intercession is not over-rigorous. After all, it was not so long ago that four miracles were required for canonisation of a non-martyr. Since this is (unfortunately) the aspect of the process which interests most outsiders, however, I would urge the Vatican to publish, from time to time, readable collections of the divine signs (usually inexplicable cures) which have been judged miraculous. Publication would serve two purposes: it would tell the wider Church ? and world ? what the Church understands miracles to be, and it would help to anchor the concept of the miraculous to the larger vision of Christian life and spirituality. Finally, it would help to stem the tendency (in the US at least) to see the hand of God or one?s favourite saint in every beneficent coincidence. When everything is a miracle ? as popular American religion encourages us to believe ? then nothing is a miracle.

FINALLY, those involved in the process by which saints are recognised should appreciate that canonisation is a form of story-telling: it locates the life of a saint (itself a form of narrative) within the wider story of God?s love and an individual response to the gift of grace. In this respect, the Catholic imagination still tends to produce impossibly pious biographies of the saints ? including, I must say, many of the positios produced by the congregation itself. Who can identify with a figure who never committed serious sin, which is the implication in nearly all the positios I have read?

Yet Catholics do seem to relish most those saints who remind us of the cost of true discipleship, and of its rewards. We ask their intercession both because we identify with their story and because we find in that story the challenge of the spiritually heroic. Who among us, after all, would stand in line for hours to view the relics of a good enough saint?

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