Author's Event: Eileen McCafferty DiFranco

Who is a saint?

The late John Paul II famously said that anyone could be a saint. He went on to canonize more saints than all of the popes in the previous five centuries combined. He was canonized in 2014, a mere nine years after his death. In 2020, the Vatican began proceedings to canonize his parents, proving that anyone can, with the right connections, be a saint.

However, the word “anyone” comes with a caveat. Only the Vatican kind of anyone, i.e., those who play by the rules of the institution, are considered worthy of canonization. John Paul II never canonized Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador because of the latter’s association with liberation theology. At great risk to his life, Romero had repeatedly begged the Salvadorean army to obey the command of the Prince of Peace and stop massacring their fellow citizens. Romero was shot in the heart by Catholic right wing death squads as he stood at the altar during Mass.

While John Paul II earned his halo by playing by the Vatican rules, he did not play by society’s rules. He turned a blind eye towards evil in the ordained who committed the grievous sin of child sexual abuse.

Of course, some saints deserved their halo and earned their title. Many others did not. The canonized people mentioned in this book might have been good rulers, abbots, teachers, translators, nuns, priests, patriots, founders of religious orders, and writers of religious tracts. They might have resisted rape or starved and beat themselves for Jesus, defended church property and power, or extended the scope of Christianity. However, far too many of them lacked charity and decency. The faithful need to compare their actions to what the church says about them.

This book is a counter-narrative to the church’s idea of holiness. The faithful deserves to know that there were saintly people in every age who lived virtuous and holy lives but fell outside of traditional church hagiography. In the words of author Kurt Vonnegut, the true saints are those who “behaved decently in a shockingly indecent world.”

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