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The papal prerogative to declare the holiness of a departed member of the
faithful is rooted in Pope Gregory IX’s Decretals (1234),
which asserted that Rome alone had the exclusive right to canonize
saints. However, significant changes in the canonization process began
only after Pope Sixtus V created the Congregation of Rites in 1588, which
was tasked, among others, to conduct processes of beatification and
canonization.
In 1634,
through the decree Cælestis Hierusalem Cives, Pope Urban VIII forbade
the existence of any public cultus for a purported saint unless his/her
martyrdom or heroic virtues had been formally recognized by the Congregation of
Rites. Likewise, the cultus of anyone regarded as a saint may not be licit unless
a process per viam cultus proves that he/she had been the
object of an immemorial public veneration at least one hundred years before the
publication of the decree.
In 1969,
Paul VI divided the Congregation of Rites into two separate offices, one of
which, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (CCS), was given complete and
sole jurisdiction over all beatification and canonization proceedings from then
onward.
Below
are models of holiness who
were formally beatified or canonized under the auspices of the CCS since its
establishment.
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