SIGNS OF HOLINESS, Miracles give me faith in the sainthood process

By Colleen Dulle • September 26, 2023

By Colleen Dulle


Despite having been part of the Dorothy Day Guild’s work for the last five years, I am generally skeptical of the Catholic Church’s canonization process. I report on the Vatican for my day job, and so I receive periodic emails from the Holy See Press Office listing which saints’ causes have advanced to each stage—Servant of God, Venerable, Blessed, Saint. I’ve been struck by how many of these candidates for canonization are European, and how many are priests or nuns. It is almost a given that every religious order wants its founder canonized. What I hadn’t realized before I started reporting on this is that those religious orders don’t just have the desire to have their founders canonized; they also have the resources.

“At the times that I do despair about the state of the canonization system, though, one thing never fails to give me hope: the miracles.”

Canonizations take money, something that grates at my anticapitalistic sentiments. It feels like this sacred process—of determining someone’s holiness and waiting for signs from God (miracles) affirming it—shouldn’t be influenced by what Pope Francis calls “the dung of the devil.” Yet, it is. It has to be. Compiling all the documents and testimonies for a canonization cause takes time and effort, and people deserve to be compensated for that work. Likewise, the few officials working in the Vatican’s overloaded Congregation for the Causes of Saints deserve compensation, as do all the Roman postulators whose job it is to help the Vatican officials move each cause along.

But this has an unfortunate downside, that sometimes tempts me to want to throw the whole process out. Because of the money and resources it takes, people from poor communities or who do not have religious orders or incredibly dedicated family members or friends who are willing to take on decades of work and expense on their behalf often don’t reach or make it past the initial stages of a canonization cause. And that skews the communion of canonized saints (not those who were never canonized but who were recognized as saints historically) toward those with resources. I don’t think that’s fair or just.

At the times that I do despair about the state of the canonization system, though, one thing never fails to give me hope: the miracles. No matter how flawed our process is, how influenced it is by who can sustain the costs and who cannot, it consoles me to know that at least in this one area, God is putting his finger on the scale in a decisive way. God is weighing in on who is canonized and who isn’t, giving his stamp of approval through a sign that no human can work. And the historic evolution of the church’s canonization process has led to the verification process for those miracles becoming incredibly strict. The church goes to great lengths to make sure that there is no uncertainty around miracles ascribed to a potential saint’s intercession.

I do think there is room for many reforms to the canonization process. But the miracles God works are his way of saying that although the process is imperfect, this person was, indeed, a saint.

-

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

- 

Share this post

Ninety-three years ago today!

By Casey Mullaney • May 1, 2026
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings to each of you in this fourth week of Easter and on the occasion of the Catholic Worker movement’s 93rd anniversary! On May 1st, 1933, Dorothy, her daughter Tamar, and several others sold the first issue of The Catholic Worker newspaper in Union Square for a penny a copy, and as Dorothy later wrote in The Long Loneliness, “It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on”! It is because of that faithful witness to the Gospel through Dorothy’s practices of nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty that we get to share in this joyful pilgrimage with you all these years later. Thank you, Dorothy, and happy anniversary to all our Catholic Worker friends, past and present!

Easter with Dorothy Day

By Casey Mullaney • April 9, 2026
Dear Dorothy Day Guild members and friends, Happy Easter; Christ is risen! We hope that the past several days have been occasions of joyful celebration with friends and family for each of you. As a Guild, we would like to extend a special greeting to all of those around the world who were received into the Church on Saturday night at the Easter Vigil. Here in South Bend, several of us from the Catholic Worker community attended the Easter Vigil at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, where our pastor surprised us by invoking Dorothy towards the end of his homily. Speaking directly to the newly baptized and confirmed, as well as the entire congregation, Fr. Andrew talked about how Dorothy’s own conversion to Catholicism had been sparked by the unexpected joy of finding herself pregnant with her daughter, Tamar, and how Christ had come to her, offering her peace. We know that Dorothy was on many of our minds as we watched new brothers and sisters in Christ enter the Church. Christopher Hale, of Letters from Leo, wrote an open letter to all the new Catholics who were received at the Vigil last weekend, offering them thanks and welcome, and inviting them to look to a fellow convert to understand the Church. “Dorothy Day — one of the great American Catholics of the twentieth century — converted to Catholicism and spent the rest of her life serving the poorest of the poor on the streets of New York. Her Episcopalian mother once complained that Dorothy had left respectable society to go to Mass with “the help.” Day did not flinch. She knew what the Church was for.” Like Dorothy, each of these new members of Christ’s Mystical Body enrich the Church and are a gift to the world. We hope that like Dorothy, each of them finds a home, a vocation, and a challenge in Her embrace. The following afternoon, our Catholic Worker community hosted a few dozen friends and neighbors, including many of the guests who join us for breakfast on weekends, for Easter dinner. It is truly a gift to be able to celebrate this feast day with so many of the people who have come into our lives because of Dorothy’s witness to the Gospel, and the legacy of hospitality, voluntary poverty, and nonviolence she gave us!

Happy 100th Birthday, Tamar Day Batterham Hennessy!

By Casey Mullaney • March 4, 2026
Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Lenten greetings to each of you! Even just one week in, it’s been a great gift to journey with Dorothy, who reminds us that the practices of Lent, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are powerful tools in the struggle for justice and peace. On the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Catholic Worker movement and newspaper , Dorothy wrote about the seamless garment of love that was the animating force of Christian faith. “We want to show our love for our brother, so that we can show our love for God,” she said in 1943, “and the best way we can do it is to try to give him what we’ve got, in the way of food, clothing and shelter; to give him what talents we possess by writing, drawing pictures, reminding each other of the love of God and the love of man. There is too little love in this world, too little tenderness.”
More Posts