A Pope's legacy - saints by the score

While the world waits for Pope John Paul II's successor to be named, there is inevitable speculation on how the late pontiff's 26-year reign will be remembered.

He has been widely referred to as "the saint-maker" because of his propensity to create saints - occasionally elevating some whose history was unknown or whose faith was suspect.

John Paul II created more new saints - 483 in his pontificate - than all Popes in the previous four centuries combined. And you can add to that more than 1300 created as saints-in-waiting through beatification.

Sainthood became a growth industry under John Paul II.

And, as in the case of the Martyrs of Vietnam, he was sometimes a volume dealer.

Not much is known about the short life of the Vietnamese man now named John Dat.

He was born in 1764, ordained as a Catholic priest in 1798 then immediately arrested in one of the periodic anti-Catholic purges which punctuate Vietnam's recent history. After three months' imprisonment he was beheaded for refusing to deny his faith.

In 1900 he was beatified by Pope Leo XIII - the first step to sainthood - then in 1988 was canonised by Pope John Paul II, one of over 100 Martyrs of Vietnam declared a saint.

Four years earlier John Paul II made saints of 103 priests, missionaries and lay people who died in the early days of the church in Korea. About half of all new saints under John Paul II came from Asia and were either local converts or missionaries.

What is of interest to those outside the Roman Catholic Church is why John Paul II embarked on what John Allen, columnist for the National Catholic Reporter called "halo inflation".

In short, he was responding to the needs of his broad constituency by allowing for local models of holiness in an increasingly secular world.

The number of saints John Paul II proclaimed in Asia reflected the church's desire to expand in the region and the need to provide converts with local models.

The church's decline in adherents in the developed world has been accompanied by growth in the so-called Third World and this is where many believe the future of the faith will develop.

Secular journalists have condescendingly referred to El Pele - Cerefino Jiminez Malla, shot by firing squad in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War for publicly defending a priest, and beatified in 1997 - as "an illiterate horse trader". But that doesn't trouble the similarly illiterate faithful who identify with his deeds and faith. And the making of a saint starts with the local diocese.

A nominee for sainthood must have been dead for five years "to allow greater balance and objectivity ... and to let emotions of the moment dissipate", according to the website of the Catholic Communications Service, although under John Paul II the process was relaxed and the process could start within that period.

The bishop of the diocese investigates the candidate's merit, witnesses are called to testify to the candidate's virtues (faith, hope, charity, prudence and so forth) and the documentation is passed to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

In Rome the case is examined by nine theologians and if the majority are in favour it is passed on to cardinals and bishops who may then pass it to the Pope.

For beatification a miracle must be attributed and verified - after death is acceptable - and if that is approved the candidate is considered "the Blessed", one step down from a bona fide saint.

However in 1983 John Paul II instigated a fast-track ascent to sainthood by doing away with the Devil's Advocate, the position previously charged with casting a critical and challenging eye over the evidence.

Now the official promoter of the candidate can recommend directly to the Pope, going past the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints which studies the candidate's credentials. This has centralised a Pope's power, but also led to some controversial decisions.

While few would doubt Mother Theresa was a good woman, whether she is a candidate for sainthood might be another matter.

With remarkable haste she has been set on that path. She was beatified in September 2003, only six years after her death. The miracle which confirmed the guiding hand of God in her actions happened a year after her death. A mother of five was taken to the Missionaries of Charity home in Patiram after she could no longer afford treatments for headaches, fever and a large abdominal lump. The nuns prayed for her and placed on her a medallion Mother Theresa had touched. The following day the lump had disappeared. A miracle.

But some have had a more problematic path.

In 1998 John Paul II visited Croatia to beatify Cardinal Alojsije Stepinac who was Archbishop of Zagreb during World War II. While Stepinac took steps to protect the Jewish community toward the end of the war, he previously sat in the Ustashi Parliament - created as a Croat puppet of Nazi Germany - which approved a policy of extermination of the Russian Orthodox Church, gypsies and communists.

He also declared in January 1942, "Hitler is an envoy of God" and oversaw a church which forcibly converted about one million Orthodox Serbs and set up concentration camps where a quarter of a million non-Roman Catholics who refused to convert were tortured and executed.

He was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment in 1946 for war crimes.

For canonisation, accredited sainthood, a miracle needs to be attributed to the Blessed. However all this can be automatically waived, as John Paul II did many times, if the candidate died a martyr.

Some have noted history's most frequent-flyer pope rarely kissed the tarmac of a new country without first beatifying or canonising local contenders.

"His zeal for saint-making," said Vatican specialist Orazio La Rocca six years ago, "ultimately conveys a simple message to the faithful: Anyone can aspire to holiness, from the simplest priest who prays daily, to the mother who dies because she refuses an abortion, along with this century's many martyrs".