Father Maximilian Kolbe was beatified by Pope Paul VI for his virtues as a confessor, but canonized by Pope John Paul II as a martyr. Pope Francis is making a distinction between the two categories with a new path to sainthood for “martyrs of charity.”
The apostolic letter Maiorem Hac Dilectionem is little known. Written by Pope Francis on July 11, 2017, it establishes that the canonization process for saints will be made easier. The title of the letter is taken from Jesus’s words in the Gospel of John (15:13): “Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
The Pope presents a new path to sainthood – the oblatio vitae, or the free offering of life in charity to others. This path has certain further requirements – that of having lived a virtuous life, having a reputation for sanctity, at least after death, and evidence of a miracle.
The letter explains that this, a third pathway, is “distinct from the causes based on martyrdom and on the heroism of virtues” – that is, the death need not be for the Catholic faith, and the servant of God’s virtues may be ordinary, rather than heroic.
The Holy Father’s letter corrects a misunderstanding of martyrdom that became common under Pope John Paul II, whereby dying in witness to the Catholic faith became confused with dying for the faith.
A common example is Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan who died in Auschwitz, as described in my earlier article. St. Maximillian was arrested for sheltering Jews and he offered to be starved to death in the place of an American captured by the Nazi militia. The Franciscan monk was beatified by Paul VI as a confessor, but John Paul II opted to canonize him as a martyr. The unofficial title given to him – “martyr of charity” – came to refer to saints canonized by John Paul II who were killed for their witness to the faith and not necessarily for their Catholic beliefs.
This development caused controversy among canon lawyers, theologians, and Penedict XVI. In 2006, the German pope wrote to Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, suggesting that proper procedure was not followed during his predecessor’s reign. He underlined that it was “necessary to ascertain the odium fidei [hatred of the faith] of the persecutor” at the time of death.
These are the same objections that Francis encountered after beatifying Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador assassinated by a right-wing death squad. Some held that Archbishop Romero was targeted for his alignment with the political left and not for his Catholic faith. They argued that his murderers didn’t express odium fidei and were probably Catholics themselves.
So, the addition of this third pathway should be seen as some long overdue house-keeping. By giving the “martyrs of charity” their own official category, Francis restores the unique honour of true martyrdom while acknowledging the special grace of those who die as Christ died – to spare another, in an act of pure, unselfish love.
This new category, the oblatio vitae, the free offering of life in charity to others, has many skeptics who consider the definition too broad. They say: “This status includes tens of thousands of soldiers, policemen, hospital nurses, and countless others who voluntarily and freely offer their lives for others.”
They object: “Ordinary virtue, a reputation of holiness, and giving one’s life to a charitable cause that leads to premature death do not seem like an especially high bar and creates a saint factory,” as it was said of John Paul II who canonized and beatified more people than all his predecessors combined – 482 and 1,327 respectively.
His “saint factory,” critics said, made it appear too easy to be canonized as “martyrs of charity.”
The new rules therefore don’t make any new candidates eligible for beatification. If anything, they are going to make the process more strenuous. Martyrs don’t require a miracle, but those in the oblatio vitae category do.
As with all laws, some canonists worry that canonization will now become “a posthumous ecclesiastical decoration for merely the great and the good.” But that is up to Pope Francis and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to decide.
Benedict XVI made a distinction between physical and moral miracles in considering cases of beatification. He wrote: “The uninterrupted practice of the Church establishes the need for a physical miracle, since a moral miracle does not suffice.”
Francis and the congregation would do well to bear that in mind. If a conservative interpretation is taken of the Pope’s letter Maiorem Hac Dilectionem, the number of new petitions should quickly return to normal.
It would not be surprising if, for instance, Francis uses his apostolic letter to advance the causes of priests killed by South America’s dictatorships. As leader of Argentina’s Jesuits under the brutal Videla regime, he was accused of taking a conciliatory approach towards the junta. Clergymen who pressed openly for social justice were often imprisoned, assassinated, or just “disappeared.”
Those who sacrificed their lives for the rights of the poor and indigenous peoples would not qualify as martyrs, given that the Church-backed regimes did not express odium fidei.