Last week, Pope Francis approved the beatification of the Spanish nun Juana de la Cruz due to her reputation for holiness. This exception, although unusual, is not the first time it has occurred during his pontificate.
The Apostolic Constitution Divine Master of Perfection of Saint John Paul II on the legislation relating to the causes of saints, as well as the norms of the Dicastery of the Causes of Saints, determine that to proclaim a person as a saint it is necessary to demonstrate two miracles attributed to their intercession.
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First of all, for the beatification to be approved, the prefect of the dicastery must give a positive verdict on a miracle, subject to an exhaustive prior investigation, which must subsequently be approved by the Holy Father.
The same process must be followed for canonization. Both the Vatican dicastery and the Pontiff must approve a second miracle that occurred on a date after his beatification.
However, the Holy Father can carry out the so-called “equivalent” beatification or canonization, also called “extraordinary” or “certainly”, by recognizing and ordering the public and universal worship of a Servant of God without having gone through the ordinary procedure. . This route also involves the formal recognition of sanctity, only by extraordinary means.
The conditions for this recognition of the Church are contained in On the Beatification of the Servants of God and the Canonization of the Blesseda text by Pope Benedict XIV. The Pontiff can dispense it if the veneration of the saint has been carried out for a long time and continuously by the Church, or if they are particularly important ecclesiastical figures with a widespread ancient liturgical cult and with an uninterrupted reputation for holiness and intercession before God.
Furthermore, his cult must date back to 1534, that is, to the period in which the new norms for the recognition of the blessed were introduced.
In this context, Canon Law establishes that a person can be declared a saint on the basis of other elements and reasons that can replace a scientifically and theologically proven miracle.
Pope Francis took advantage of this regulation for the first time by exempting Saint John XXIII, canonized on April 27, 2013, from a second miracle.
The same thing happened in the case of the canonization of Angela of Folignoone of the most famous mystics of the Church in the Middle Ages along with Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Catherine of Genoa, inscribed in the Book of Saints on October 9, 2013.
In December of that same year, San Pedro Fabrothe first companion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola was also inscribed in the Book of Saints without any miracle being verified, with the approval of Pope Francis.
On April 3, 2014, Pope Francis added the name of the P. José Anchietawho laid the foundations of evangelization in Brazil, to the religious Mary of the Incarnationknown as the “Mother of the Catholic Church in Canada”, and the Bishop of Québec (Canada), Bishop Francisco de Montmorency-Laval.
In Poland, Michal Giedroyc, an Augustinian monk of Lithuanian origin who lived in the 15th century, was beatified on June 8, 2019.