Friday, February 20, 2015

Some are canonised to be saints but others are always......

I have always been puzzled with the thought that whether there could be saintly people who have lived or living in Catholic Church who could not get through the whole process of canonisation in order to be officially declared Saints. Are there any such saintly persons who are left out without being canonised?

If you could count on the number of saints in Catholic Church, majority of them are from Western Countries. St. Thomas, one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus, is conventionally believed to have landed in India in AD 52 and baptised several people, founding what is known today as Saint Thomas Christians or Nasranis. Therefore, the Eastern Church Christians had been equally privileged to have received Christian faith from one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus and share the ‘Experienced Christ.’

Apart from a few, that too recently, such as St. Alphonsa, St. Kuriakose Chavara, and St. Euphrasia, Kerala Church does not have many saints, which means the Eastern Church which is believed to have over 2000 years of existence had to wait this long to have her own saints.

Perhaps the Eastern Church has not been aware of the whole processes and steps to get a righteous person canonised, and that could be the reason that it does have less number of saints compared to what the Western Church does have. 

Also, canonisation is a very prolonged and complicated process. There needs to be a dedicated team, so much of documentation process and of course, strong 'hold' in the Vatican Curia. The first step in the process to make someone a saint cannot normally start until at least five years after their death. Step two: Become a 'servant of God', Step three: Show proof of a life of 'heroic virtue', Step four: Documentation of a verified miracle resulting from the intercession of the prospective saint and Step five: Canonisation.

The Catholic Church had been dominated by the Western Countries who dictated the terms, and the Eastern Church did not have much role until the 20th century, when the number of believers in the Western Church going to church and taking part in Church activities began to dwindle, and most of the church were closed down as a result. Therefore, Catholic Church found some hope (faith) in the Eastern Church (Kerala) and in this context, perhaps a few were canonised as saints, of late.

Perhaps most of our grandparents would have lived a righteous life almost equal to that of some of the saints in their era. Canonisation, which is the process to officially pronounce by the Holy See that someone is a saint of the Catholic Church, perhaps wouldn't happen in the case of every single righteous person. Some are privileged enough to be officially pronounced as saints but others are always......

Image Courtesy: Google Image 

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