Skip to main content
Sunday, November 15, 2026Nov 15
Subscribe
All Sections
Search
More

Questions and answers about Mother Teresa and making saints

FILE - In this 1978, file photo, Mother Teresa, head of the Missionaries of Charity order, cradles an armless baby girl at her order's orphanage in what was then known as Calcutta, India, in 1978. Pope Francis has signed off on the miracle needed to make Mother Teresa a saint, giving the nun who cared for the poorest of the poor one of the Catholic Church's highest honors just two decades after her death. The Vatican said Friday, Dec. 18, 2015, that Francis approved a decree attributing a miracle to Mother Teresa's intercession during an audience with the head of the Vatican's saint-making office on Thursday, his 79th birthday. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams, File)
FILE - In this 1978, file photo, Mother Teresa, head of the Missionaries of Charity order, cradles an armless baby girl at her order's orphanage in what was then known as Calcutta, India, in 1978. Pope Francis has signed off on the miracle needed to make Mother Teresa a saint, giving the nun who cared for the poorest of the poor one of the Catholic Church's highest honors just two decades after her death. The Vatican said Friday, Dec. 18, 2015, that Francis approved a decree attributing a miracle to Mother Teresa's intercession during an audience with the head of the Vatican's saint-making office on Thursday, his 79th birthday. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams, File)

By Associated Press 5 min read

VATICAN CITY (AP) – The Catholic Church makes saints to provide role models for the faithful, and Pope Francis has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors in churning them out at a rapid clip. The process is cloaked in secrecy and open to criticism, given that it deals with science-defying miracles, politicized choices and significant sums of money, as was recently revealed in some blockbuster books on Vatican finance.

But saints aren’t going away anytime soon, and Francis has actually made the process easier in some ways by doing away with the miracle requirement for several high-profile saints.

___

HOW ARE SAINTS MADE?

A postulator – essentially the cheerleader spearheading the project – gathers testimony and documentation and presents the case to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. If the congregation’s experts agree the candidate lived a virtuous life, the case is forwarded to the pope, who signs a decree attesting to the candidate’s “heroic virtues.”