The Path to Sainthood

Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese,
22 Dec 2009

Canonisation is a long involved process  although the Catholic Church stresses that it does not make Saints, it recognises them. However this recognition only comes after detailed and intensive examinations of a candidate, taking into account the holiness of the life led and what is known as "the continuing devotion," or in lay terms, whether the candidate’s good works and prayers to them, continued after death.

For Mary MacKillop who is set to become Australia’s first-ever saint, the process began in 1917, eight years after her death when the Mary MacKillop Memorial Chapel was erected in her memory in North Sydney.

Step One: Venerable

This is the first step on the road to sainthood. When the Pope gives a candidate to the altars the title "venerable" that means he recognises the person lived the Christian virtues in an heroic way. It is also the start of a long and detailed study of many documents.

Step Two: Beatification

The second step on the road to Sainthood is Beatification which occurs after evidence is gathered on a person’s holiness and a commission of Cardinals and theologians certify that God has performed a miracle through the intercession of the candidate.

For Mary MacKillop this evidence sent to Rome in 1925 where it was examined and passed on to the commission  who explored the evidence in detail and weighed up the case for Beatification.

The first stage of the commission’s decision occurred in 1973, when the Vatican announced Mary MacKillop would take the title: Servant of God. The process then continued in earnest with medical cures attributed to the Melbourne-born sister carefully examined for the qualities of miracles.

This particular phase of the process can take many decades, particularly as it is often difficult to get some surgeons or medical practitioners to affirm that a "cure" has no known scientific explanation.
In Mary MacKillop’s case, the miracle examined occurred in the 1960s when a woman was told the advanced leukaemia from which she was suffering, was terminal. Told she only had a few months to live, she was basically sent home to die. But against all odds, after asking the Sisters of St Joseph to pray to Mary MacKillop on her behalf, and being given a relic of Mary's to wear, the woman fully recovered. Not only did she have no further sign of leukaemia but there was no scientific explanation for her extraordinary and complete recovery.

However before the Vatican could approve this "miracle," the claims needed to be fully investigated by a panel of medical specialists in Rome to ensure that the "cure" the woman had undergone was an "intercession" by the Servant of God - in this case Mary MacKillop - or was a recovery that could in fact, on research, be explained by science.

It is important to note according to Church tradition and belief, that while a miracle can occur, this favour is granted by God and not by those who intervene on His behalf.

Following the strict criterion laid down for investigation of miracles, the miracle attributed to Mary MacKillop’s intervention was approved in 1993 by Pope John Paul II, and she was formally Beatified two years later at a ceremony performed in Sydney by His Holiness, when she was given the title: Blessed.

Step Three: Canonisation

To move on from Beatification to Canonisation and Sainthood, the Church requires the occurrence of a second miracle which has occurred since Beatification took place, by prayers to the Beatified.

However the Beatified does not grant the miracle or favour. Again God acts through them.

For this second miracle, extensive details and witness statements must be sent to Rome where they are studied in depth by medical experts - Catholic and non-Catholic -  and theologians.

The second miracle attributed to Mary MacKillop’s intercession and approved this week by the Vatican, concerned a woman diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer around the time of Mary's Beatification in 1995.
With lung cancer and extensive secondaries, the woman had only months if not weeks to live. But as with the previous miracle studied by the Vatican, when the woman’s family began praying to Mary MacKillop, not only did the woman suddenly announce that she felt "well for the first time in months" but she was able to get out of bed under her own steam. Examined by her doctors they found to their amazement that all traces of the cancer had gone.

On December 18, Pope Benedict XVI announced that the Church had approved the second miracle for Blessed Mary MacKillop.

With two miracles now attributed to the Blessed Mother, and approved by the Vatican’s panel of medical, scientific and theological experts, canonisation is expected to follow with the canonisation ceremony for Mary MacKillop creating her a Saint of the Church to take place over the next six to 12 months.