If canonization requires miracles, how was Pope JPII able to canonize 103 people at once?

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I have a Catholic friend who talks to an Atheist friend of his a lot.
So he often comes to me for explanations or clarifications.

Today he came to me about the large number of saints canonized by Pope John Paul II.
If a canonization requires 2 miracles (or 1 for martyrs), how can he canonize over 100 martyrs at once. (Which he did on more than one occasion.)

Thank you for the help!

michel
 
I’m not 100% sure, but I believe that all of these individuals have miracles attributed to them.

Here are details for each Saint:
vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/index_saints_en.html

Also, in the film “Karol: The Pope, The Man,” there’s a scene of JPII explaining to the Cardinals (I believe) that “every person is called to holiness.” The number of canonizations was one way of verifying this truth.

Cheers!
 
cazayoux said:
I have a Catholic friend who talks to an Atheist friend of his a lot.
So he often comes to me for explanations or clarifications.

Today he came to me about the large number of saints canonized by Pope John Paul II.
If a canonization requires 2 miracles (or 1 for martyrs), how can he canonize over 100 martyrs at once. (Which he did on more than one occasion.)

Thank you for the help!

michel
Click to expand...
Safia might be right that miracles are recorded for the 103 who were canonized out of the 8000+ martyred Koreans. But really, canonization only “requires” miracles as a matter of the standard procedure under canon law. There is no theological or doctrinal requirement. And historically, canonization of martyrs has proceeded along much more rapid lines than confessors and virgins. Hopefully nobody ever demands two miracles apiece for the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia and the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Mt. Ararat, not to mention St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins!
 
From your link, you’ll see examples of what I’m talking about.

6 May 1984, Seoul (Korea) - 103 Korean Martyrs.
79 of them were beatified in 1925 and 24 more in 1968.

Did we actually have the rigor of Pope JPII’s new canonization rules in 1983 for these 103 martyrs?
In other words, did each of these 103 people have at least one miracle attributed to them?
 
MarkThompson said:
Safia might be right that miracles are recorded for the 103 who were canonized out of the 8000+ martyred Koreans. But really, canonization only “requires” miracles as a matter of the standard procedure under canon law. There is no theological or doctrinal requirement. And historically, canonization of martyrs has proceeded along much more rapid lines than confessors and virgins. Hopefully nobody ever demands two miracles apiece for the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia and the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Mt. Ararat, not to mention St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins!
Click to expand...
I agree. Even under the new guidelines Pope JPII gave in 1983, martyrs were beatified without a miracle. However, canonization of a martyr still required one miracle.

Has the Church officially canonized the 10,000 Martyrs of Nicodemia and the 10,000 Martyrs of Mt. Ararat?

michel
 
I also found this on newadvent.com
newadvent.org/cathen/02364b.htm
See that there are different sections for “The beatification of confessors” and “The beatification of martyrs”
Then there is a separate section on “The canonization of confessors and martyrs” which mentions miracles needed for canonization. In this section there is no distinction between confessors and martyrs".

It seems there are several good Catholic sites that describe the process in generalizations and may have different wordings.

Is NewAdvent more ‘official’ than catholic.org or catholic-pages.com?

Is there a more official site that makes this clear?

Thanks again for helping with this!!

michel
 
This is my flimsy understanding of the canonization process, so take this with a grain of salt.

Canonization is initiated by the local diocese, which does the investigation and turns over the results to the Holy See, which then takes over the investigation. This is the same for the investigation of miracles, although some investigation is done by larger dioceses as well, I think.

What I’m fairly sure of is that the Pope *typically *doesn’t approve the canonization decrees one at a time. He will instead review them all, and sign them all at once, usually on a feast day. Those Saints may have lived hundreds of years ago, or only decades. They all just get approved at the same time. Plus, there are often unnamed companions, especially in the case of martyrs. So, 133 saints all at once isn’t such an odd thing.
 
Mark is right that there is no doctrinal requirement for miracles to be a critera in the canonization process. The Pope has the authority to dispense with the requirements if he sees fit to do so.

If the Pope did it, that’s good enough for me. 👍
 
Thank you ALL so much for the help.
I knew I could count on those in the Catholic Answers Forums to get what I needed.

This is exactly the kind of discussion and information I needed.

THANK YOU!!
God Bless!!

michel
 
Joe_5859 said:
Mark is right that there is no doctrinal requirement for miracles to be a critera in the canonization process. The Pope has the authority to dispense with the requirements if he sees fit to do so.

If the Pope did it, that’s good enough for me. 👍
Click to expand...
This is the best answer. There’s a been a few Saints who bypassed the “need” for miracles completely (Dominic and Francis, among others).
 
A canonization is an Ex Cathedra decree. The pope does not need the proven miracles. At the end of the day, the decree is based on the faith of Peter.

Through the centuries, Canon Law has required proven miracles attributed to the candidate as the final step. The first step is a heroic life of virtue. However, that law, like so many other laws, is a formality. The pope is not bound to any of those laws, because he is the Living Law of the Church. In other words, Peter lives the law. The law flows from Christ to us through Peter.

Many men and women have been canonized solely on the pope’s authority without any study of their lives, no proven miracles, though many were alleged and no beatification. I don’t know who and how many. However, I do know that in our own Franciscan family, Francis, Anthony and Clare were never studied, beatified and had no proven miracles after their death. There were many claims of miracles. Recently, Pope Benedict beatified John Duns Scotus without any proven miracle.

We also have to remember that one of the things that Bl. John Paul complained about was that the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints was too outdated in the manner that it gathered information and that data was collected.

Allegedly, the problem was that reports had to be hand written, which took forever, because some are several thousand pages of notes that have to be condensed and transcribed. Now, you can use a computer, cut and paste. Voila, you have your report.

Cutting down the number of required miracles and adding more technology to the process, hastened things a lot.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
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