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SearchADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS
TO MEMBERS OF THE CONGREGATION FOR THE CAUSES OF SAINTS
Clementine Hall
Thursday, 12 December 2019
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I am pleased to encounter the large family of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which carries out its work at the service of the universal Church with regard to the recognition of the holiness of those who have faithfully followed Christ. I greet with affection Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Prefect of the Dicastery, and I thank him for his words. I also extend my greetings to the Cardinals and the Member Bishops; the Secretary Archbishop Marcello Bartolucci, the Undersecretary, the Officials, the Consultors and the Postulators.
Our meeting today is motivated by an important occasion: the Congregation for the Causes of Saints is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. In fact, on 8 May 1969, Saint Paul VI decided to replace the Congregation for the Sacred Rites with two Dicasteries: the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and the Congregation for Divine Worship. With this decision he made it possible to allocate sufficient resources of personnel and work to two large, clearly distinct areas, so as to better respond both to the ever more numerous requests of the particular Churches, and to be in line with the council’s intentions.
In this half-century of activity, your Congregation has studied a large number of biographical and spiritual profiles of men and women, in order to present them as models and guides of Christian life. The many beatifications and canonizations that have been celebrated in recent decades show that the Saints are not unattainable human beings, but are close to us and can sustain us on the path of life. In fact, “they are people who lived with their feet on the ground; they experienced the daily toil of existence with its successes and failures, finding in the Lord the strength to rise again and again, and to continue on their journey” (Angelus, 1 November, 2019). And it is important to measure our coherence to the Gospel with different types of holiness, since “each saint is a mission, planned by the Father to reflect and embody, at a specific moment in history, a certain aspect of the Gospel” (Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et exsultate, n. 19).
The witness of the Blesseds and the Saints enlightens us, attracts us and also questions us, because it is the “Word of God” embodied in history and close to us. Holiness always permeates and accompanies the life of the pilgrim Church through time, often in a hidden and almost imperceptible way. Therefore, we must learn to “contemplate the holiness present in the patience of God’s people: in those parents who raise their children with immense love, in those men and women who work hard to support their families, in the sick, in elderly religious who never lose their smile ... Very often it is a holiness found in our next-door neighbours, those who, living in our midst, reflect God’s presence” (ibid., n. 7).
Your Dicastery is called upon to verify the various modalities of heroic holiness, both the one that shines most visibly, and the most hidden and least conspicuous, but equally extraordinary. Holiness is the true light of the Church: as such, it must be placed on the candelabrum so that it can illuminate and guide the path to God of all the redeemed people. It is a daily verification carried out by your Dicastery, which since ancient times has been conducted with scrupulousness and accuracy in its investigative research, with seriousness and skill in the study of procedural and documentary sources, with objectivity and rigour in the examination and at every level of judgment, concerning martyrdom, the heroicity of the virtues, the offering of life and the miracle. These are fundamental criteria, which are required by the seriousness of the subject matter, by legislation and by the just expectations of the People of God, who entrust themselves to the intercession of the Saints and are inspired by their example of life.
By following this path, the work of the Congregation makes it possible to eliminate all the field of ambiguity and doubt, and achieve full certainty in the proclamation of holiness. I can, therefore, only exhort each of you to continue on the path traced out and followed for about four centuries by the Congregation of the Sacred Rites, and continued over the last fifty years by the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. In this I offer my encouragement to the Superiors, Cardinals, Bishops who are Members of the Dicastery, and all Officials.
In the historical, theological and medical fields, the Consultors are called upon to carry out their work with full freedom of conscience. They carefully study the cases entrusted to them and formulate the relevant judgments with mature reflection, in an impartial way and without taking into account any conditioning, from whatever direction it may come. The Dicastery’s Regulations and praxis, as well as the vigilance of the Superiors, favour a relationship of absolute independence between the petitioners of the individual votes and those who form or coordinate the particular Congresses. It is a matter of always keeping in mind the specific aims of the Causes, which are for the glory of God and the spiritual good of the Church, and are closely linked to the search for truth and evangelical perfection.
For their part, Postulators should be increasingly aware that their function requires an attitude of service to the truth and cooperation with the Holy See. They should not allow themselves to be influenced by material visions and economic interests; should not seek their own personal affirmation; and, above all, should avoid everything that is in contradiction to the meaning of the ecclesial work they carry out. May the Postulators never cease to be aware that the Causes of Beatification and Canonization are realities of a spiritual nature; not only procedural, spiritual. Therefore, they have to be treated with marked evangelical sensitivity and moral rigour. Indeed, once, with Cardinal Amato, we spoke about the necessity of a miracle. It takes a miracle because the finger of God is precisely there. Without a clear intervention of the Lord, we cannot go ahead with the causes of canonization.
Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you for your diligent service to the whole Church. Through your work, you especially support the Bishops in their commitment to spread awareness that holiness is the deepest need of every baptized person, the soul of the Church and the primary aspect of her mission. I entrust your daily work to the motherly intercession of Mary, Queen of All Saints, and as I ask you to pray for me, I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing to you.