John Paul II is a saint machine.
The 82-year-old pontiff heads into his 24th year of papacy this month having named an astonishing 463 saints -- so far. On Sunday, he declares yet one more.
For Roman Catholics, who believe God makes saints and the pope discerns them, this is one eagle-eyed pope. He has recognized more saints than any pope in history -- more, in fact, than all the popes of the past four centuries combined.
Some fret that he is rushing through recognition for fad candidates whose merits haven't been tested by time. ''What's the rush? If someone is really in heaven, we'll find out in time,'' says the Rev. Richard McBrien, author of Lives of the Saints.
Many believers who delight in the inspiration and eccentricities of saints welcome the bonanza. Catholicism teaches that everyone in heaven is a saint, an exemplar of holiness, and it's the job of the church to identify the faces in the crowd. The current tally: nearly 10,000.
Biblical figures, church fathers and martyrs came to be called saints by popular acclaim and veneration long before formal procedures were established.
''No one sat around in the third century debating whether the martyred maiden Agnes, who died resisting her rapist, was a saint,'' says Monsignor Kevin Irwin, theology professor at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. ''They just brought candles to her tomb and prayed in her name and said God worked miracles when she interceded.''
In short: a saint. A complex process for verifying sainthood was eventually established, but the papal monopoly on declaring the name -- the process called canonization -- is a relatively recent shift in the 2,000-year-old church.
And John Paul II may have changed the course of church history in his record-setting pontificate. Like no pope before him, he has highlighted the diversity of heaven. He has canonized men and women from almost every country, culture and class -- not just priests and nuns, but peasants, slaves and duchesses as well. ''He invites us to remember we are all called to be saints, that it can be done by anyone, anywhere,'' Irwin says. ''In the era of internationalization, he's gone global.''
Determined to showcase contemporary saints, John Paul II has sped up the canonization process: Less time and fewer miracles are now required in some cases.
The saint to be named Sunday is Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, a 20th-century movement of ultra-observant lay Catholics. He zipped through the church's meticulous investigation a mere 27 years after his death in 1975.
By comparison, Herman the Cripple, author of the popular hymn Salve Regina, took eight centuries to be noticed and still remains a rank below sainthood.
Some choices controversial
Critics have grumbled about Escrivá since 1992, when the Spanish monsignor was beatified, meaning he was called a ''blessed'' (someone with one miracle credited to his help; sainthood requires two). Opus Dei members, nearly 100,000 worldwide with 3,000 in the USA, revere him for his call to sanctity in daily life. Supporters spent an estimated $1 million promoting his cause. Others say that Escrivá was uncritically loyal to the pope and cozy with right-wing politicians and that he created an intensely private movement that some fear borders on a cult.
How can Escrivá be a saint when Pope John XXIII, who convened the historic Second Vatican Council reforms of the 1960s, lags behind? John XXIII is a ''blessed'' -- a rank below saint, worthy of reverence but not mentioned in the prayer over the Eucharist, at baptisms or ordinations.
''It's appalling,'' McBrien says. ''John XXIII was perhaps the most beloved pope in history.''
John XXIII has plenty of company. John Paul II has named 1,293 men and women as blesseds.
And there's a pattern to which of John Paul's beatified contenders shoot up to sainthood: 80% have been martyrs who died for their faith. That's a key to the legacy of the Polish pope, who witnessed persecution by Nazis, fascists and Communists, papal biographer George Weigel says. The emphasis on martyrs is ''a powerful witness to the vitality and the cost of faith in the modern world.''
This pope's first canonizations, in 1982, set the tone. He named, along with a monk and two nuns from 300 years ago, a Polish Franciscan priest, St. Maximilian Kolbe, who was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp for opposing the Nazis. He died there when he exchanged his life for that of a condemned married man.
In 1983, John Paul II streamlined the canonization process so martyrs were automatically beatified.
Soon the pope was canonizing martyrs en masse. Among the 464 saints he has named: 103 Korean martyrs in 1984, 117 martyrs of Vietnam in 1988 and 120 martyrs of China in 2000. ''His message is that there are more people in heaven than white European males,'' says the Rev. Thomas Reese, author of Inside the Vatican.
But the pope ignited arguments when he canonized martyr, philosopher and Carmelite nun Edith Stein in 1998. Born Jewish, she converted to Catholicism and was put to death at Auschwitz in 1942. Jews say Stein was killed for her Jewish background, so she's not a Catholic martyr.
Jews also are concerned about the canonization campaigns for two popes. Some cite anti-Semitism in the background of Pope Pius IX and criminal indifference to Jews' plight in the Holocaust by Pope Pius XII. The campaign by Pius XII's supporters is still in the early stages in the elaborate procedures by the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints for recognizing and verifying sainthood before the pope makes it official.
A matter of church standards
Saints are a touchy topic, Reese says. There was ''a time Anglicans would get mad whenever we canonized someone they killed in the Protestant Reformation.''
But Catholic theologians stress that the church recognizes saints by its own standards, just as Muslims, Jews, Hindus and others decide by the light of their faith whose lives to honor and emulate. It wasn't until 1183 that popes became more directly involved. After the 16th-century reforms of the Council of Trent, the Vatican began requiring meticulous proof of a candidate's ability to call on God to work miracles. Most of the 32 popes since Clement VIII in 1592 didn't live long enough to canonize anyone. The 17 who did named just 296 worthy candidates. Most were priests or members of religious orders, ''people whose followers had the luxury of lobbying full time for their cause,'' saints scholar Matthew Bunson says.
But a quarter-century as pope has given John Paul II plenty of reach. In 1983, he did away with the postmortem trial approach, eliminating florid touches required by prior popes such as a ''devil's advocate'' to root out a candidate's flaws. He emphasized instead an in-depth documentation and verification of holiness in a candidate's life history. He also waived the customary five-year cooling-off period between the death of a famously faithful person and the ''opening of a cause,'' an early step in the Vatican's investigation.
Thus, a cause was opened for Mother Teresa in 1999, two years after her death. On Tuesday, the Vatican formally credited her with assistance in a miracle -- healing an Indian woman's abdominal tumor. She could be beatified in 2003, warp speed in church time.
Yet for all the complicated steps, some saints still seem to rise by acclamation. More than 300,000 people jammed St. Peter's Square in June for the canonization of St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), an Italian Capuchin priest with a spectacular list of healings credited to him since his death in 1968. Claims that he bore the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, passed exhaustive Vatican research.
The story of St. Juan Diego, a 16th-century Mexican peasant believed to have been given roses in winter by the Virgin Mary, inspired millions of Mexicans. His humble cloak, bearing her image and known as the miracle of Guadalupe, is displayed in the Mexico City cathedral where he was canonized in July. Scholars speculate that no such person ever existed.
So what? asks the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus of the journal First Things. ''Somebody had an experience, told the story and produced a remarkable relic (the cloak). He's called Juan Diego, but whether there was a person by that name is in the same category with whether there was a St. Ann, mother of Mary. The devotion of the faithful is testimony itself. There are innumerable miracles attributed to Juan Diego's intercessions. I won't second-guess the pope.''
Some deleted from calendar
The Vatican does second-guess itself, though. In the church's latest listings of 6,500 of the saints and blesseds authorized for devotions on their feast days, some ancient martyrs and saints were deleted from the church calendar to make room for more modern saints. They won't necessarily be mentioned at Mass, says church historian the Rev. Augustine Thompson. Saints have always been a message of their times in temporal as well as spiritual politics.
Bunson, author of The Saints of John Paul II, points to the range of this pope's choices. They vary from wealthy Philadelphian St. Katharine Marie Drexel (canonized in 2000), who spent her inheritance evangelizing blacks and American Indians, to the patron of gypsies, Ceferino Jimenez Malla. The horse dealer was killed by Communists during the Spanish Civil War and was beatified in 1997.
A greater reality
All offer the reassurance that God acts in the lives of the faithful, Bunson says. ''Turning to saints is more than just a desperate effort for solace in the midst of disasters like 9/11,'' he says. ''It's a reminder of what Christians believe is a greater reality.''
Even so, Brother Michael O'Neill McGrath, author and illustrator of books on saints who inspire modern workers, is unimpressed by the multitudes of Pope John Paul II's saints and blesseds. ''While they're good people, I'm sure, they're not terribly interesting. We're not going to spend a lot of time offering prayers to obscure French founders of orders or a married couple that didn't sleep together for 26 years (Luigi and Maria Quattrocchi, beatified last year). What kind of an inspiration is that?''
But the Rev. C. John McCloskey, pastor at a Washington D.C., Catholic outreach center, likes to quote the pope's confidante, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: ''When someone complained the pope was naming too many saints,'' he recalls, ''Cardinal Ratzinger replied, 'There cannot be too many saints.' '' After all, McCloskey says, ''making saints is the purpose of the church.