Costs of making saints in the church is curbed by Pope

Mangalore Today News Network

Vatican City, Mar 12, 2016: Pope Francis on Thursday made key changes to the complex and often confusing financial procedures involved in the making of Roman Catholic saints. A decree calls for new controls on the costs of making saints, which can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in the gathering of evidence and lawyers’ fees. The process can take decades.


Accusations have sometimes been made of mismanagement and corruption and that the system favours candidates for sainthood from wealthy countries.In his 2015 book ’Merchants in the Temple’, Italian author Gianluigi Nuzzi wrote that a commission looking into Vatican finances found that the church’s saint-making office had little or no documentation of funds used by postulators, the chief promoters of candidatures.


Nuzzi is now on trial in the Vatican for publishing leaked documents. The new decree stipulates that contributions from the faithful and groups must go into an account and be managed by an administrator. The administrator must "scrupulously respect the intentions" of contributors, keep detailed documentation, and present budgets to a superior.

In India several holy people have been put on the path to sainthood, particularly in Kerala. It is a welcome pointer.