Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re leads the funeral Mass of Pope Francis, as the coffin is blessed, in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, April 26, 2025.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Vatican City: Although two of the five popes before Pope Francis have been named saints, merely serving as pontiff is not a shoo-in to canonization. At least not anymore.
In the early years of the Roman Catholic Church, most popes, starting with St. Peter, who is considered the first to hold the seat, were named saints after they died. Of the first 50 popes, 48 got the honor. Over time, it became much rarer.
To date, 80 of the 266 popes to serve over nearly 2,000 years have been canonized. Eleven others are on a waiting list of sorts, having been beatified, the penultimate step to sainthood.
Getting there involves years of investigation and review by the church, particularly the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Vatican officials and consultants examine candidates' goodness, holiness and devotion to God and carefully scrutinize their writings. Those who pass muster are declared "venerable."
The next step is beatification, which requires the dicastery to accept the validity of a miracle brought about by the intercession of the candidate. After that, the Vatican must accept the validity of a second miracle attributed to the person's intercession for them to be declared a saint. The pope makes the final decision on canonization.
The most recent pope to be canonized was Paul VI in 2018. Four years earlier, John XXIII and John Paul II became saints at a joint ceremony.
For most of the church's history, decades usually passed between a person's death and the beginning of a push for their canonization.
From 1588 to 1978, the average time span between a person's death and sainthood was 262 years, according to Rachel McCleary, a researcher at Harvard University. That dropped to just over 100 years during the last three papacies, in part because John Paul II shortened the waiting period to begin a cause for sainthood, as the process is known, to five years after a person's death.
Even that can be waived. At John Paul II's 2005 funeral, which hundreds of thousands attended, banners and cheers rose from the mourners saying, "Santo, subito," or "Sainthood now." His successor, Benedict XVI, waived the waiting period, allowing John Paul to be canonized nine years after his death.
After a Vatican report in 2020 found that John Paul may have ignored accusations of sexual abuse against disgraced former prelate Theodore McCarrick, critics wondered whether the pontiff been had been made a saint too soon.