Word: pope
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...sainthood were formalized. A non-martyr would need to have performed four posthumous miracles, usually spontaneous healings. (Today, the church requires a team of doctors to verify their veracity and prove that miraculous healings were not the result of modern medicine.) The process included two major steps: beatification, the pope's recognition that a person is worthy of consideration, which begins a lengthy investigation process; and canonization, the pope's formal recognition that a person is truly a saint. In each case the argument for sainthood would be rebutted by a Devil's Advocate, a person appointed by the Church...
...Pope Benedict XVI canonized four new saints to the Catholic liturgy: 19th-Century Italian priest Gaetano Errico; Mary Bernard (Verena) Bütler, a Swiss nun and missionary in Latin America who died in 1924; Alfonsa of the Immaculate Conception, a nun who who died in 1946 and is the first named female saint from India; and Narcisa de Jesús Martillo Morán, a pious laywoman from Ecuador who died in 1869. In the Catholic faith, only God can make a saint; these four are among those who "have emerged as individuals who can light...
...Over the next few centuries, however, sainthood was extended to those who had defended the faith and led pious lives. With the criteria for canonization not as strict, the number of saints soared by the sixth and seventh centuries. Bishops stepped in to oversee the process, and around 1200, Pope Alexander III, outraged over the proliferation, decreed that only the pope had the power to determine who could be identified as a saint. (Alexander was reportedly angered about one saint in particular whom he believed had been killed in an alcohol-fueled brawl and was therefore not worthy of canonization...
...Over his 27-year tenure, Pope John Paul II named more saints than all his predecessors combined, beatifying more than 1,300 people and canonizing nearly 500. He fast-tracked Mother Theresa's canonization, and made a distinct effort to identify saints in Africa and Asia. In 2000, much to the chagrin of the communist government there, John Paul II canonized the first saints in China, naming 87 Chinese citizens and 33 foreign missionaries who had died in the country between 1648 and 1930. He also named the first saint from Brazil, home to more Catholics than any other country...
Halpern, along with researchers R. Andrew Sewell and Harrison G. Pope ’69, published their results in the journal Neurology...