My favourite definition of a saint is someone who has not been researched enough, which shows that I am a child of the Enlightenment – relativist and rational – or perhaps a Northern European Protestant, much the same thing. Enlightenment Protestants find it entertaining but uncomfortable to return to the world described in Robert Bartlett's fine book, because in our neck of the woods, it's long gone, 500 years ago, give or take the odd folk custom and the decorous observances of the Anglican Prayer Book.
But throughout much of Christianity, particularly in Latin America and Africa, the saints flourish with all their old power, and their numbers steadily increase. Not that far away, indeed: in countries no more than an hour or two from Heathrow. It is no coincidence that the first Polish Pope, John Paul II, made more saints in his quarter-century pontificate than all his predecessors in the last half-millennium. The Bishops of Rome have cornered much of the market in saint-making – Bartlett describes how they did it – but they don't have a monopoly. Orthodox churches and the ancient Churches of the East beyond Orthodoxy have their own ideas about sainthood, and above all, it's the business of the Christian in the street to recognise sanctity where he or she stumbles across it. At John Paul II's funeral, there were enthusiastic shouts from the crowd of Santo subito! – "Whaddawe want? Sainthood! Whendawe want it? Now!" The Roman Catholic church's bureaucracy was uncharacteristically quick on this occasion to listen to the opinions of its laity (some laity at least) and the Polish Pope is due to take his place among the saints this coming spring, less than a decade after his departure from this earthly life.
More here-
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/12/why-can-dead-do-such-great-things-robert-bartlett-review
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