UK: Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins demanded more rigour in the Catholic Church’s process of verifying saints.
Cardinal Martins, the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, issued new guidelines to clarify and modernise the procedure.
He stressed the need for a "true reputation for holiness" among sainthood candidates to be established before the process begins.
The Portuguese prelate suggested not enough rigour had been applied in the past when bishops forwarded cases to the Vatican.
‘Saint factory’
The Congregation for the Causes of Saints makes exhaustive enquiries into the lives of men and women proposed for official sainthood.
Critics have suggested the department has become what they call a "saint factory", overwhelmed by the high number of applicants for sainthood which are originally suggested at local level.
There are more than 2,200 dossiers pending, some of which have been on file for decades, even centuries, says the BBC’s David Willey in Rome.
Pope Benedict XVI’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, beatified more people than all his predecessors put together.
In his 27-year pontificate he beatified more than 1,338 people and canonised 482.
Fast-tracked
Pope Benedict has tried to restrict the numbers of men and women who are proposed as role models for saintly life in the 21st Century, our correspondent says.
The current Pope has fast-tracked the sainthood cause of John Paul II
But even he has fast-tracked some candidates for sainthood, notably John Paul II himself.
The case of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Salvadorian church leader who was gunned down while celebrating Mass in 1980, and is already venerated as a Saint and miracle worker in Latin America, has been put on hold while further investigations are made.
To put Archbishop Romero on the path to sainthood, Cardinal Martins said the Church must first determine that he was killed for religious reasons rather than political ones.
Cardinal Martins also denied reports that the case of Pope Pius XII had been halted, and defended the wartime Pope against accusations that he was silent about the Holocaust.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7251557.stm
