From Martyrdom To Marketing: Is There A Canonization Crisis?
(ANALYSIS) There was a time when sainthood meant something serious. something sacred. To be declared a saint meant being set apart radically from the rest of us. Saints weren't just admired; they were revered and, in some cases, even feared. Hunger, persecution, visions, exorcisms and martyrdom marked their lives.
Sainthood was earned, if not in blood, then in extreme humility and absolute submission to Christ. It was not fast. It was not fashionable. And it certainly was not a reward for being beloved by the world.
That idea now lies on the operating table, gasping for breath. And the latest scalpel to slice deeper is the Vatican’s push to canonize Antoni Gaudí. Let’s not insult our own intelligence here. Yes, Gaudí was a genius. His work — especially the Sagrada Família — is breathtaking. It stuns even the faithless. The man lived modestly, walked to work and poured his artistic vision into structures that feel more like prayers than buildings. But does that make him a saint?
The question shouldn’t require committee votes or more than a few functioning neurons to answer. It should begin and end with the tradition itself — a tradition that once demanded miracles, verified suffering and supernatural virtue. Gaudí may have inspired devotion, but did he truly embody it in the way the Church has historically understood it? Or is the Vatican, once again, moving the goalposts? I suggest the latter.
We live in an age obsessed with storytelling and spectacle. In its desperation to stay relevant, the Catholic Church is slowly, deliberately reshaping sainthood into a brand. Gaudí isn’t the first sign. He’s just the most aesthetically convenient. Before him came Carlo Acutis, a teenage computer whiz turned Eucharistic enthusiast, now poised (it has been delayed because of Pope Francis’ death on April 21) to become the first millennial saint.
Acutis was devout. He was kind. He died young. But he also lived in the social media age. He catalogued miracles online, made piety digestible for a digital audience, and wore sneakers instead of sandals. Now, with the speed of a startup IPO, he’s being canonized faster than many martyrs, mystics, and missionaries who spent decades or centuries waiting for recognition.
The church’s defenders say this is evangelism. They say the world needs relatable saints, that Acutis and Gaudí speak to the present in a way the desert hermits and beheaded apostles cannot. But relatability was never the metric. Saints weren’t supposed to mirror us. They were supposed to confront us. They were spiritual shocks to the system. What’s happening now is a recalibration of the holy toward visibility, media appeal, and emotional resonance. We are canonizing content, charisma, and what plays well in press releases. And the cost, I argue, is the very meaning of sanctity.
In earlier centuries, canonization was an excruciating process. The church appointed a “devil’s advocate” whose job was to pick apart the candidate’s record, highlight flaws, question miracles and casted doubt.
The assumption was that sainthood was too sacred to be granted lightly. Holiness had to be battle-tested, not just beloved. It had to endure suspicion, scrutiny, and centuries of reflection. Today, that role is gone — literally. Pope John Paul II eliminated the office in 1983. Since then, the number of canonizations has skyrocketed. Not all are undeserved, but the message is unmistakable: we are in a new era where the threshold is lowered, the process sped up, and the standard diluted.
Gaudí gave us cathedrals that bend light and gravity. Acutis gave us a website documenting miracles. But neither of these things — beautiful as they are — comes close to the qualification for sainthood, or at least they shouldn’t. Neither built an orphanage in a war zone. Neither lived under threat of death for their faith. Neither left behind a trail of medically inexplicable miracles verified through rigorous testing. Yet both are being elevated as if they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Maximilian Kolbe, who volunteered to die in another man’s place in Auschwitz.
That’s the real scandal here — not that Acutis and Gaudí are being honored, but that the honors being handed out have lost their weight.
It’s not hard to see the appeal. In a world starved for good press, canonizing a visionary architect or a wholesome teenager is safe, PR gold. It humanizes the church. It creates new icons for the age of digital dopamine. But it also erodes the spiritual authority of the institution itself. When the criteria for sainthood start to mirror the criteria for a legacy award or an influencer brand deal — reach, impact, virtual footprint — then sainthood stops being about sacrifice and becomes a form of prestige. This is not a petty critique. It’s a plea for clarity.
The church and the papacy are the last global institutions that claims to take holiness seriously. If it begins to trade spiritual rigor for cultural palatability, it risks losing its voice with both vocal skeptics and the fiercely faithful. People already struggle to differentiate celebrity from substance.
If the church follows suit, the line between sacred and performative will vanish completely. Sainthood should remain complicated and countercultural. It is meant to honor the people who lived so radically for Christ that their existence throws us into discomfort. That’s not Gaudí’s legacy. That’s not Acutis’s legacy. And that’s OK.
We can honor people, admire them, be moved by their stories, and still recognize that sainthood is not a lifetime achievement award. It is the church’s most solemn declaration— that this person now sits with God, interceding for us, having lived a life worthy not of admiration but of veneration. If we forget that, if we canonize the beloved over the beatified, we’re not elevating these individuals. We’re poisoning the idea of what it means to be holy. And eventually, if the bar keeps dropping, we won’t be able to tell the difference between a saint and a celebrity.
John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. He covers psychology and social relations. His writing has appeared in places such as UnHerd, The US Sun and The Spectator World.