The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gave notice this week of the advancement of several causes for new potential saints.
Alongside the normal steps taken in the process of beatification and canonization for several men and women, Pope Francis also employed the little-known process of equipollent or “equivalent” canonization for the French Carmelite sisters martyred in the French Revolution.
But who are they, and what is that?
The sixteen sisters of Compiègne, whose story was famously dramatized in Francis Poulenc's opera, “Dialogues des Carmélites” —debuted 1956 — have been the object of popular devotion since the time of their death.
The account of their martyrdom is well-suited to the high drama of opera — and needed no exaggeration to fit on stage.
During the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution, religious communities were disbanded, and common prayer and religious dress were made criminal offences. After a rushed conviction on ambiguous charges, the whole community of sisters were given a death sentence.
On their way to the guillotine, the sisters, still in formation, were permitted to affirm their vows. The community went joyfully, singing prayers, and encouraging Catholics around them; they had resolved to offer their lives for the Church in France. When they arrived at the guillotine, they knelt one by one before their religious superior, and asked permission to die.
The oldest of the sisters executed could not even stand up on her own; she was 78.
Pope Francis’s use of equipollent canonization reflects the long-standing cultus or veneration of the sisters. This form of canonization, because it is rather more a recognition of longstanding acclimation of the faithful, does not require the standard miracles, juridical steps, and ceremonies as the normal process for canonization.
In effect, an “equivalent” canonization is the papal rubber stamp which recognizes a pre-existing, and wide-spread devotion, one which has outlasted the generations immediately after the person’s death.
The announcement this week is a way of squaring the legal status of a cause — or the lack thereof — with the well-established reality of an individual or group’s popularity and veneration.
It is meant as an acknowledgment of the legitimacy of a cultus which began in the sensus fidelium and, being so rooted, has grown into a place equivalent to legal canonization in the life of the Church.
In the majority of cases, such persons have already been popularly styled ‘saints’ for some time, and were commemorated liturgically in local Western churches — St. Wenceslas was so venerated in Bohemia before his equipollent canonization in 1729, as were some founders within their respective religious communities like St. Norbert in 1621 and St. Bruno in 1623, or more broadly in Eastern Catholic Churches, like St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in 1882.
Although this way of recognizing sainthood has seen less use in recent memory – Pope Benedict XVI made only one equipollent canonization, his compatriot, Hildegarda von Bingen in 2012 – the practice has never been completely discontinued, and remains an accepted prerogative reserved to the Roman Pontiff.
Equipollent canonizations reached their highest frequency in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with important names such as: Cyril and Methodius in 1880, Justin Martyr in 1882, John Damascene in 1890, Venerable Bede in 1899, Ephrem the Syrian in1920, Albert the Great in 1930, and Thomas More and John Fisher in 1932.
In a December 18 decree from the Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints, Pope Francis ordered that the Sisters of Compiègne be listed in the Book of Saints as a way of extending their cultus to the universal Church.
The idea of a“Book of Saints” invokes an image of a large, hidebound, probably red, tome that lists (as far as anyone can) all the saints on record.
Such a book would be of real interest to Catholics, even if one could be forgiven for having never seen it.
In reality, the “Book of Saints,” more properly called the “Roman Martyrology,” is the Church’s official daily record of saints and martyrs, including many holy men and women from the Old Testament — St. Daniel the Prophet and the Three Children in the Furnace are commemorated this week on December 17.
The Martyrology is a sometimes under-appreciated liturgical book of the Latin Church.
Undergoing periodic revisions alongside the General Liturgical Calendar, the Martyrology’s official Latin text was greatly amplified after the Second Vatican Council to include hundreds of martyrs from the English Reformation, French Revolution, China’s Boxer Rebellion, and many martyrs who died as witnesses to the faith under Communist regimes of the last century.
The revision also included saints from earlier martyrologies of local churches, such as a large number Celtic and Syriac monastic saints, to give greater attention to the universality of Christ’s call to holiness. The most recent print edition, which is, in fact, a large, red, cloth-bound tome, was published in 2004.
The Martyrology is intrinsically connected to equipollent canonizations because it is by listing the saints’ names there that these canonizations take practical effect. The book directly relates to our shared Catholic notion of a saint’s liturgical place in the life of the Church.
These canonizations and the Martyrology also serve as a witness to the Christian unity desired by the various apostolic Churches. In 2001, the names of several post-schism Orthodox saints were included in the book, and in 2023, the names of the twenty-one Coptic martyrs killed by ISIS 2015 were added. Earlier this year, as a sign of fraternal unity, the Pope announced the inclusion of St. Isaac the Syrian, long venerated by the Assyrian Church of the East, during a meeting with that Church’s head, Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Awa III.
The weighty volume provides lists of saints, and a line or two of biography, for each day of the year, even “ferial” or “non-saint” days. The Martyrology also names each of the many “and Companions” we often see mentioned each year on the General Calendar, such as those who died alongside St. Charles Lwanga in Ugandan and St. Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn in Korea.
The book also outlines how the names can be proclaimed liturgically each day during the Liturgy of the Hours.
The Roman Martyrology is the only post-conciliar liturgical book not yet translated into English. While translations are available in Spanish and French, the official English translation, undertaken by ICEL — the International Commission on English in the Liturgy — is still on its way. In the meantime other, partial or unofficial attempts have been made to make this inspiring book more accessible for daily reading.
Pope Francis has made other equivalent recognitions, most notably of St. Peter Faber, whose equipollent canonization was announced on 17 December, 2013. While Faber’s equipollent canonization was not the first in Francis’s pontificate (that was St. Angela of Foligno in October 2013), it serves as a textbook case for the use of this process, and is of personal importance for the Holy Father.
Faber was an early Jesuit whose life and work the Pope studied in his years of formation in the Society of Jesus. St Ignatius Loyola, the order’s founder, was a close friend of Faber and regarded him especially for his spiritual insight and writings. Ignatius considered Faber to be the most adept, even more so than himself, at leading the Spiritual Exercises, the kind of
‘spiritual bootcamp’ which would become the hallmark of Jesuit spirituality.
For those reasons, the Jesuits held a devotion to him from the earliest days of the order. To be a son of St. Ignatius meant to love Peter Faber, and to absorb his spiritual teachings. Sacred images in private oratories, prayers to Faber in prayerbooks, and even relics of him were spread among Jesuit communities, though he was not formally canonized until the 2013 announcement.
Still very much the Jesuit, and out of devotion to Peter Faber, Pope Francis announced his equivalent canonization on his own birthday.
The sixteen Carmelite sisters will now have their names recorded in full in an entry for July 17, the date of their martyrdom in 1794. The pope thus extended the ability to commemorate these saints liturgically to the whole Church. A votive or “devotional” Mass can be celebrated for any saint listed in the Martyrology on that given day, provided no other feast takes precedence (GIRM 316, a-b.)
The equipollent canonization of these heroic sisters means a wider appreciation of their stories, and a universal invitation to all Christians to draw strength from their witness and intercession.
