Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church to Declare Easter Sunday Victims as Saints: How Does the Process Work?

Sri Lanka’s Catholic church is planning to begin the process of declaring all the 273 people killed in the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings as “saints”.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the Archbishop of Colombo, announced the move while addressing a mass on Sunday (January 21). “A person can be named a saint only after the completion of 5 years since one’s sacrifice. Therefore, we will move towards declaring Easter Sunday victims as saints on April 21 this year,” he said, according to a PTI report.

On April 21, 2019, nine suicide bombers belonging to the Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ), believed to be linked to ISIS, carried out a series of blasts in three churches and three luxury hotels in Sri Lanka. Among the dead were foreign nationals, including 11 Indians.

How does the process of declaration of saints work? Can anyone be accorded the title? Who is tasked with doing so? We explain.

What is the process of canonising Catholic saints?

Multiple religions recognise saints as holy figures, who are believed to be associated with divinity. In Catholicism, the Roman Catholic Church designates saints after a process to verify their sainthood. It is believed to have declared around 10,000 saints over time.

Essentially, saints are people who are believed to have led virtuous lives, performed “miracles” (such as healing someone) and ascended to heaven after death. Their names are written in the Book of Saints. The veneration of saints started as early as 100 AD, with Christians honouring other Christian “martyrs” (those who died for the cause of religion).

After canonization, the saint’s name is added to the Catalogue of Saints and can be invoked in public prayers, Holy Mass can be offered and churches dedicated in their names, and their images can have a halo. Then, churches and church-run institutions can be named after such people and Christian children can adopt the names of these saints at the time of baptism. The saint’s relics are venerated and festivals are held in their names. Their places of birth, death, and burial become centres of pilgrimage.

Ranjith said that the process for sainthood can happen only five years after their death. This gap is to ensure that enough time has passed to evaluate their actions and study their life. In some cases, the period has been cut short for certain people, as was done for Mother Teresa. Nevertheless, the process takes years.

Generally, five years after a person’s death, the bishop of their diocese (the area under his jurisdiction as a religious leader that can include multiple churches) can begin looking into their life for evidence of their sainthood. The miracles they performed and other kinds of testimonies can be considered. This is called “Postulation”.

According to a BBC report, the bishop then asks the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican’s department that makes recommendations to the Pope on saints, for permission to open the case. If they agree, the person who is being considered is called a “Servant of God”.

As part of this body, 9 theologians scrutinise the evidence and documentation. If a majority passes it, it goes to the Pope to decide if that person lived a life of “heroic virtue”. Once recognised by the Pontiff, the candidate is called “Venerable”.

In the next stage of beatification, the miracle needs to be adjudged for a person to be declared “Blessed”. The Diocese where it is claimed to have occurred carries out an investigation. The Scientific Commission must decide by accepted scientific criteria that there is no natural explanation for the alleged miracle.

The Theological Commission will judge whether what happened was indeed a miracle and whether it was due to God acting through the Venerable Servant. Again, the Pope is to confirm this. Once beatified, the candidate can be privately venerated.

To move towards formal canonization, a second miracle must be confirmed. The same procedure is followed and ends with the Pope’s decision. For example, in the case of Mother Teresa, the Pope acknowledged the healing of a tumour in the abdomen of a Bengali tribal woman, Monica Besra, as the first miracle and a second miracle involving a Brazilian man with brain tumours was recognised. Many doctors and rationalists rejected the so-called miracles, and several questions were raised.

According to the BBC, “During the canonisation ceremony, the Pope conducts a special Mass, reading aloud the individual’s life history and then chanting a prayer in Latin that declares the person a saint.”

Is it unusual that so many people will be nominated for sainthood at once?

Another type of declaration of saints is for “martyrs”. Writing in The Conversation, Mathew Schmalz, Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy Cross in the US, said: “Martyrs have a different path to sainthood. They become “blessed” when the pope makes a “Decree of Martyrdom.” After a single miracle, martyrs are “raised to the glory of the Altars,” a phrase that refers to the public ceremony in which a person is formally named a saint.”

Therefore, a martyr can be beatified without a verified miracle. But it is required to canonise someone as a saint. “Those who died in churches in April 2019 sacrificed their lives for what they believed in. They came to church because they believed in Christ,” Cardinal Ranjith said on Sunday.

On the matter of the blasts, Christian groups have expressed displeasure with the investigation so far. As of December 2023, no criminal convictions have happened. Then Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena was also ordered by the country’s Supreme Court to pay money for the victims’ fund, for “failing to prevent” the bombings “despite receiving intelligence ahead of the attack”.

In some cases, multiple people have been accorded the title at once. According to Britannica, a group of 45 Anglican and Roman Catholic martyrs were executed during the persecution of Christians under Mwanga, the ruler of Buganda (now part of Uganda) in the late 19th century. “The 22 African Roman Catholic martyrs were collectively beatified by Pope Benedict XV in 1920 and canonized by Pope Paul VI on October 18, 1964,” it added.