Is there a formal process? Some office in the Vatican that considers requests? A purely local decision? Is it a matter of tradition only?
The question is inspired by the canonization today of John Paul. I was wondering whether he might become a patron saint of Poland or Kraków (where he was archbishop) or Wadowice (where he was born). According to Wikipedia Poland already has seven patron saints and Kraków has two, so I guess adding one more shouldn’t be an issue.
Popes can name patron saints, a group can adopt a patron saint, or saints can become patron saints by simple consensus, where enough people just start considering them patron saint of something.
As an example of the first, here’s the document where Pope John Paul declares Thomas More a patron saint of politicians.
Technically, there aren’t patron saints for places, only for the people of a place. A patron saint is one who makes a special point of interceding on behalf of his / her people. Nothing without a soul needs a patron saint. “Patron saint of France” is just a metonym for “Patron saint of the French people.”
That doesn’t stop people from making lists of the patron saints of household appliances, though.
This, I would have to think. I know this board is well-represented with atheists and agnostics (this poster included) who doubt that there are “saints” to begin with. But if we want to look at this question from an in-story viewpoint, I would expect that the saints themselves choose whose patron they will be, simply by choosing to do their miracles for those. Those who still live, of course, would eventually notice.
Good points. I wonder how formally this is defined. For example, does the patron saint of the French people go by a person’s physical location, by their legal domicile, by their ancestry, by their passport, etc.? E.g. if a US citizen of Cajun descent is stationed in France as part of the US military, does the patron saint of the French people consider him “French” by virtue of his French cultural background and/or his physical presence in France, or does he look at his US passport and think, yup, foreigner?
OK: your patron saint first, doesn’t do miracles (only God does, the saints are go-betweens, advocates), and second, in general the choice is because there is something about the saint’s life linking it to the advocacy; people choose to venerate a person as saint way before they get identified as “venerable” (beatus) or saint. They’re examples, first of all; miracle-obtainers very distantly.
Fermin (bishop) was Basque, back in Roman times. Francis was born in Xavier castle, the Navarrese guardpost on the middle road between Navarre and Aragon and one of the founders of an order whose relationship with my people is an “egg or chicken” kind of thing - do we argue like Jesuits because they’ve got so many schools in the area, or the Jesuits argue like us because their founders were from around here? But Mike wasn’t from around here, he’s not even human! Well, no, but he’s Captain of the Celestial Host and when you can be identified by your neighbors because “even when you guys sing ballads, you sound like you’re marching to war” he seems appropriate… similar reason why our cousins to the immediate NW went with Sebastian, the praetorian.
Basically, anyone can pray to any saint for any reason they see fit. I could pray to Mary in her guise as the Lady of Guadalupe, Empress of the Americas… But I could also pray to Augustine, because I respect his philosophical leanings, or I could pray to Patrick, patron of (some of) my ancestors, or I could pray to Colman, patron of my parish, or I could pray to Francis, for his respect for nature. Or I could pray to my grandfather, who’s never been officially canonized, but don’t you tell me he’s not in Heaven. Or, of course, I could skip the middleman, and pray directly to God.
Well, here’s the problem. If random miracles just start happening, you don’t know who to thank for them. Was it an officially recognized saint? Was it the good-hearted bishop who died last year? Was it the farmer who took in a lot of orphans? Maybe several saints requested different miracles or got together and asked for the miracles? You don’t know.
The way it usually has to work is that someone has to pray to the departed and ask for help. Then when a miracle happens, the person who prayed has to come forth and say “I was praying to X [who may be an officially recognized saint or someone yet to be recognized as such] and this miracle happened!” Alternatively, a person or group of persons can get together and pray publicly and then when a miracle happens, everybody knows whom to credit for the intercession.
But sometimes saints do reveal themselves apparently. There is a couple petitioning the church to have Pope Pius XII canonized. The woman had cancer and started praying to St John Paul II shortly after his death (but long before he was canonized). In a dream, JP II came to the woman and showed her a picture of Pius XII and told her to pray to him instead, which she did. The woman was cured of cancer and now wants the church to accept this as one of the requisite miracles.
I don’t know the official process for choosing a patron saint. But my point is that there are practical difficulties in just sitting back and waiting for a saint to choose you. A community who wants a patron may have to start pro-actively joining together in prayer and hoping that their combined efforts may be enough to move a given saint to start helping them.