VATICAN - Benedict XVI to the Postulators of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints: “The saints, if properly presented in their spiritual dynamism and their historic reality, help render the word of the Gospel and the mission of the Church more credible and inviting ”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “In recent decades we have seen growing religious and cultural interest for champions of Christian holiness who show the true face of te Church, the bride of Christ 'without spot or wrinkle'. The saints, if properly presented in their spiritual dynamism and their historic reality, help render the word of the Gospel and the mission of the Church more credible and inviting ”. Pope Benedict XVI said this in his address to the postulators of the causes of beatification and canonisation of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, received in audience on 17 December. The Pope underlined that contact with the saints “opens the way for real spiritual resurrections, for lasting conversions and a flourishing of new saints. Saints usually generate more saints and nearness to their person, or simply following in their footsteps, is always beneficial: it purifies and elevates the mind, opens the heart to love God and to love others. Holiness spreads joy and hope, it meets the thirst for happiness felt by men and women of today”.
Stressing the importance of the work of those who collaborate in the process of the causes of beatification and canonisation, the Holy Father said “all those involved in the causes of saints, although with distinct roles, are called to put themselves exclusively at the service of the truth … fundamental then is the task of postulators, both in the diocesan and in the apostolic stage of the process; it is a task which must be impeccable, inspired by uprightness and based on absolute probity. Postulators must have professional competence, capacity for discernment and honesty in helping diocesan bishops to hold complete, objective and valid investigations from the formal and substantial point of view. No less delicate and important is the help they give to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the process to reach the truth by means of appropriate discussion which takes into account the moral certainties to be acquired and the means of evidence realistically available.”
In his discourse Benedict XVI recalled that 25 years have passed since the promulgation of the Apostolic Constitution Divinus perfectionis Magister with which John Paul II “revised the procedure of the Causes of Saints and at the same time reorganised the Congregation to meet the needs of the scholars and the desires of the bishops”, ensuring greater agility of procedure in the causes while maintaining solidity of research. Through beatifications and canonisations, the Pope continued, the Church “thanks God for the gift of his sons and daughters who responded generously to divine grace, she honours and invokes them as intercessors. At the same time she presents these shining figures as examples for imitation on the part of all the faithful called by baptism to holiness, the goal for every state of life.”
Looking at these numerous brothers and sisters in every epoch, “ecclesial communities realise the necessity also in our day for witnesses who incarnate the unchanging truth of the Gospel in the concrete circumstances of life, becoming in this way channels of salvation for the whole world” said the Pope and he concluded citing his second encyclical Spe salvi: "our behaviour is not indifferent before God and therefore is not indifferent for the unfolding of history. We can open ourselves and the world and allow God to enter: we can open ourselves to truth, to love, to what is good. This is what the saints did, those who, as “God's fellow workers”, contributed to the world's salvation" (n. 35).(S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 18/12/2007; righe 40, parole 584)