How Does Someone Become a Saint? The Steps, the Miracles, and How They Changed
It is not three miracles. Here is how it actually works, and how it got here.
Ask how many miracles it takes to become a saint and you will often hear “three.” It is one of the most repeated facts about the Church, and it is not correct. The real answer is more interesting, and it has changed a great deal over the centuries.
The steps today
A cause for sainthood moves through four stages:
- Servant of God. The local bishop opens an investigation into the person’s life and writings.
- Venerable. Rome recognizes that the person lived the Christian virtues to a heroic degree. No miracle is required for this step.
- Blessed (beatification). One approved miracle is required, understood as God confirming the person’s holiness. A martyr, who gave their life for the faith, can be beatified without one.
- Saint (canonization). One more approved miracle, after beatification.
So a typical saint has two Church-approved miracles: one to be declared Blessed, and one to be declared a Saint. A martyr often has only one, or none, and the Pope can set a miracle aside entirely. Pope John XXIII was canonized in 2014 with his second miracle waived.
What counts as a miracle
In practice, almost every approved miracle today is a medically inexplicable healing. A panel of doctors, working without reference to faith, has to agree that a recovery has no natural explanation. Only then do theologians consider whether it can be credited to the saint’s intercession. The bar is set deliberately high.
How it changed over time
For the first thousand years there was no formal process at all. The earliest saints were the martyrs, honored by the local Christian community and its bishop. Holiness was recognized from the ground up, by acclamation.
The first papal canonization on record came in 993. Over the next two centuries Rome gradually reserved the right to canonize to the Pope alone, a change fixed by Pope Alexander III in 1170. The process grew into a formal trial, complete with a Promoter of the Faith, popularly called the “devil’s advocate,” whose job was to argue against the cause and test every claim.
The rules were codified in the Church’s law in 1917, and then thoroughly reformed by Pope John Paul II in 1983. His constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister streamlined everything: one investigation led by the local bishop instead of two, a research-and-writing model in place of a courtroom, a much smaller role for the devil’s advocate, and the number of required miracles reduced from two at each stage to one.
That last change is part of why the “three miracles” idea lingers. It was never three. For centuries the total was closer to four, and today it is two. The Church has always been careful here, and if anything it has grown more careful over time.
A saint like this, every month
This is the sort of story in every issue of Saints by Mail: printed, reverent, and mailed to your door. A thoughtful gift for godchildren, families, and anyone who loves the saints.