I scanned CNN’s frontpage and see where the Pope has elevated 5 new saints. This leads to me to ask:
Thanking you in advance.
The Master Himself answers your question #5:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020315.html
[ol]
[li]From here: Over 10,000[/li][li]The saints provide a range of inspiring examples the you can strive to follow. If you’re a female soldier, you might find more meaning in the life of Joan of Arc than Francis of Assisi. OTOH, if you are the son of a rich merchant, St. Francis might serve you fine as an example.[/li][li]No. The ones who do are patron saints.[/li][li]Well, there were a bunch of saints that were “de-listed” because nothing is really known about them. Once agin, my cite is here.[/li][li]See here.[/li][/ol]
Well to answer question 4, one of the most famous cases of Sainthood being “revoked” was that of St. Christopher. A once very popular Saint, St. Christopher was the patron saint of travelers. People even used to put little plastic statues of him on their car dash boards.
Here’s a link to the legend of St. Chris…
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintc05.htm
Maybe someone else has more info, but it seems around the time of Vatican 2, the Church decide to drop him from the roster of saints, since there was no real evidence that such a person ever existed.
Hope that helps.
Off the point ,but I seem to remember Father Guido Sarducci saying Americans wanted a saint of their own,so the pope let the nominated get away with a couple of card tricks
I remember that bit from the early Saturday Night Live. That was St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. This first American-born saint was elevated to sainthood by Pope Paul VI despite the fact that only three documented miracles in her name were recognized by the Holy See (the usual criterion is four). She was amn educator who founded the parochial school system in the US; Seton Hall university is named for her.
Saint Christopher was not “dropped” or “revoked” at the time of the Second Vatican Council. He is still listed in the calendar of the Roman Rite on his traditional feast day of 25 July. The 1969 revision of the calendar did “downgrade” him in the sense that his feast day is no longer universally celebrated. It is still celebrated liturgically in many areas though. I have attended masses on Saint Christopher’s feast day here in Australia as well as in Europe.
Some of the saints are revamped Greco/Roman gods.St. Valentine as an example.The Virgin Mary absorbed a few Greek Goddesses.Churches were built on the sites of temples,holy places.As John Romer writes in Testament," [W]e move inside a world where belief is part of a continuum and where different faiths are merely it’s decoration."
I’m not trying to say there is anything false about Christianity.I’m only stating it was easier for people to accept if it had familiar aspects to it.
As for #5, I’m partial to the bloodthirsty saint, Saint Martin, in whose name chickens are sacrificed and poor people self-mutilate to this day. And all because he ate a poor widow’s baby. Ah, Catholocism! Glad they did away with all those filthy pagans with their bloody rituals! 
Maybe you should just buy a saint and ask it? 
Seton Hill, not Hall. My sister is currently a student there.
True and false. What the Catholic Church (and the Orthodox, and ceteris paribus, the Protestant groups that recognize them) say about canonized saints is information that has stood the test of scholarship (see Christopher and the de-listed gang for examples). But popular piety adds a lot of myth and legend to the mix.
Brigid is a good example. There was a historical St. Brigid, but beliefs about the Irish goddess Brigid got mixed with the story of the historical woman very early on. And Nicholas of Myra is perhaps the classic example: a very real bishop who attended the Council of Nicaea, transmogrified into a “jolly old elf,” a Thor-wannabe, and who knows what else).
Actually, nobody knows how many saints there are, since by definition a saint is someone who has accepted Christ and been reborn through baptism, whether still alive or in Heaven. The capital-S Saints that have been canonized are the ones that (a) can be “proven” by the Catholic system [I’ll let **yBeayf** speak to the Orthodox process, which is a bit different] to have made it into Heaven, and (b) strike someone within the Catholic hierarchy as good examples of piety. In other words, Patrolman O’Malley’s “sainted grandmother” is very likely a small-s saint who went to Heaven when she died, but St. John Nepomuk is a person whom an Austrian bishop found to have such piety and to be such a good example that he promoted him to the Vatican for canonization, while the late Mrs. O’Malley did not get that sort of earthly push.
The Church of England has never added any saints to the list they had at the Reformation, although there’s a perennial movement to add Charles the Martyr (better known as King Charles I of England and Scotland). Other Anglican national churches have no official canonization process, but do it informally by adding people to the church calendar. The Episcopal Church in the USA recently added C.S. Lewis and King Kamehameha (III, I think) and Queen Emma of Hawaii, among others, joining Phillips Brooks, the bishop who wrote “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and many other post-Reformation figures.
There is a movement afoot to canonize Mychal Judge, O.F.M., the Fire Department chaplain who died in the 9/11 events.