Recently in Sainthood causes Category

This morning the Holy Father had received in a private audience Angelo Cardinal Amato, SDB, Prefect of the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, who presented the cases for sainthood that his office has been working on.

Among the many important things decided, the Pope has given us the liturgical memorial of and inscribed in the catalog of Saints of the Universal Church, the model of holiness in the person of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, a German Benedictine nun born in Bermershein in 1089 and who died in Rupertsberg on 17 Septemeber 1179.

What is interesting here is that Hildegard never really went through the same process of canonization that's done nowadays so you can say the Church is recognizing her sanctity and place with God without the rigorous investigation that is being done for the Venerable Servant of God Michael J. McGivney. In part, this is because through the centuries the Church has changed several times, the process by which it is judged a person is a blessed or saint. Previously, people used the title "saint" with Hildegard as "popular theology and cult of the saints."

So, with this ecclesial recognition Saint Hildegard of Bingen may be honored officially as a saint of the Church. She may be considered the Church's newest Benedictine saint.

At their annual meeting, the US bishops voted to have add to the US liturgical calendar Blessed John Paul II and Blessed Marianne Cope, both are optional liturgical memorials in the proper of saints. October 22 is designated to honor Blessed John Paul and January 23 for Mother Marianne.

The Church in the US could have another saint if US Army chaplain Father Emil Kapaun's cause for beatification is accepted by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. 

The work of getting the relevant materials ready has been under the able hands of Father John Hotze, the bishop's delegate for the study of Father Kapaun's beatification and canonization. A priest of the Diocese of Wichta since 1940, Father Kapaun served in the US Army from 1944 until his death in 1951. In fact, he died in a prison camp hospital on May 23, 1951 (he was born on April 20, 1916). The Diocese of Wichita has the competence to present the dossier of his life when it officially opened the cause for his beatification on June 29, 2008. 

Father Emil Kapaun, a native of Pilsen, Kansas, served in the Korean War as a US Army chaplain, and was known for his selflessness. Kapaun is on record for courageously rescuing wounded soldiers from the battlefield, risking his own life to prevent their execution at the hands of the Chinese. The care of the priest saved the lives of sick and injured soldiers. 

The well-known Dr. Andrea Ambrosi, is going to shepherd the Kapaun case. He'll be the person who will present Kapaun's case, all 8,268 documents about the chaplain's deeds and sacrifices in the Korean War, to the Congregation of Saints at the Vatican said based on what he knows thus far, Father Kapaun has a good chance at being beatified. Ambrosi said: "He showed that there was not just a devil working on the battlefields of the war, but something else." The face of Christ.

Two miracles are being studied.

• In 2006, Avery Gerleman, then 12 years-old, near death for 87 days. She recovered after her parents prayed to Kapaun.
• In October 2008, Chase Kear, a college track athlete, medically inexplicable, he  survived a severe pole vaulting accident. His skull was fractured in several crucial places and caused bleeding on his brain. The prognosis was very grim. Family prayed for Father Emil's intercession.

Subtle differences need certain light in a canonization process. Scholasticism advocates that we always distinguish. Benedict XVI will be beatifying his friend, colleague and boss, Pope John Paul II on May 1. So, the faithful are asking what's the difference between the ecclesial acts of beatification and canonization?

The Holy See told us what's considered to be the distinguishing marks of any beatification. There are three differences:

• location of dioceses that can hold annual public liturgical celebrations in the holy person's honor;
• who ceremonially requests the pope to act;
• and the level of papal authority involved in the proclamation.

What Pope Benedict has worked hard to remind the Church, "at a beatification ceremony, the bishop of the diocese where the person dies asks that the candidate be declared blessed; at a canonization, the prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes speaks in the name of the whole church and asks that the candidate be declared a saint."

But a central difference between a beatification and canonization is that with a canonization there is an act of declaring dogmatically, that God has revealed this person with Him in beatitude. Essentially, it is a matter of papal infallibility. Being a saint is a dogmatic statement; being a blessed is not. A saint can be liturgically commemorated at the sacred Liturgy worldwide and remembered in other circumstances like naming buildings after the person. When the Church says a person is a blessed, it is an administrative act of the papal office; a blessed can be liturgically commemorated is limited to certain circumstances, like where the person lives or in the houses of the religious congregation should the person be a religious.