Word: sainthood
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Until the 12th Century saints were created quickly and easily by popular acclaim or by decree of local bishops. But by the decrees of Pope Urban VIII in 1625 and 1634, the process of canonization began to be tightened. Today the barriers to sainthood, both ecclesiastical and financial, are formidable. So expensive is the long church inquiry that Catholic Biographer Theodore Maynard says: ". . . It might seem that nobody (however holy) has much chance of being canonized today who does not belong to a religious order prepared to pay the costs, unless he can arouse such popular enthusiasm as to have...
Ordinarily, no step toward sainthood can be taken until the "Servant of God" in question has been dead at least 50 years. In Francesca Cabrini's case this requirement was waived by direct action of Pope Pius XI; her process started ten years after her death in 1917, giving her one of the quickest canonizations of modern times. (Three others were proclaimed saints at the Vatican ceremonies last week: Jeanne-Elizabeth Bichier des Ages, a French nun who died in 1838; Bernardino Realini, an Italian Jesuit, who died in 1616; John de Britto, Portuguese missionary martyred in India...
...that book by Georges Bernanos in the Religion department [TIME, Oct. 5]. He is a Frenchman in the spirit of his great tradition which started not in 1791 but in the feudal days when the spirit of France shot up and gushed forth like a fountain. That "honor and sainthood are his two absolutes" reminds me of that French sea captain in Conrad's Lord Jim, who on diagnosing Jim's trouble in the Patna affair, finishes "the honor, monsieur! . . . The honor . . . that is real" and goes away-his shabby cape swinging...
Honor and sainthood are Bernanos' two absolutes. By reference to them he illuminates the history of France and of. all Western, Christian society...
...weary mind working at its poor height, is drawn, hypnotically, nearer & nearer the iron grille which now shields the wet stones of the grotto, Werfel ceases to be the reverent and grateful craftsman. He becomes, for a few pages, one of the best things a man without genius or sainthood may hope to become: a great artist, communicating nobly with the other Hyacinthe de Lafites of his time...