Cardinal Marcello Semeraro outlines the journey to canonization.
Even from his hospital bed, Pope Francis wanted to make sure to approve Bartolo Longo’s cause for sainthood.
Pope St. John Paul II called him “The Man of Our Lady” because nobody was promoting the Rosary as fervently in his days. However, it all started out very differently.
“Look, he is from my diocese,” Cardinal Marcello Semeraro said, pulling a large red binder from a bookshelf.
Standing in the narrow hallway, the prefect for the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints opened the binder and read a few words.
“Everything is in here, his whole life,” the prelate noted.
By any measure, that life was extraordinary. Born in 1841 in rural Puglia, in southeastern Italy, Longo studied law in Naples, where he became an ardent Church opponent. Eventually, he was attracted by spiritualism and even practiced Satanism for some time. In this darkest period of his life, sick and depressed, he found faith and a deep devotion for praying the Rosary. He left Naples for nearby Pompeii, where he eventually founded the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary and built an orphanage, caring for the poorest of the poor.
Asked about Pope Francis authorizing the canonizations of both Longo and Venezuelan José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, the “Doctor of the Poor,” while he was gravely ill in the hospital with pneumonia, Cardinal Semeraro nodded slightly while replacing the binder on the shelf.
“Well, yes, we sent him the documents with all the minutes and everything,” he explained. “Usually I bring them to him; he signs them in front of me. This time, the secretary of state brought them to him.”
In preparation for the first big canonization of the Jubilee Year, the enormously popular Carlo Acutis on April 27, Cardinal Semeraro invited EWTN News for an on-camera interview on his work at the dicastery.
Approving causes of sainthood seems to be important to the Holy Father, who has smashed the saint-making record, with more than 900.
The cardinal laughs when he hears the number. “This is a bit of a joke, you know?” he said, referring to the 813 martyrs of Otranto who Pope Francis raised to the glory of the altars all at once early on in his papacy. But even without these martyrs, this papacy has seen an impressive number of new saints.
Saints’ Expert
“The process has been simplified a little bit over the years, especially with John Paul II,” Cardinal Semeraro explained. Before, for example, two miracles were requested for the beatification and two for the canonization; now, only one is needed. In the case of martyrdom, a miracle for beatification is no longer required, only for the canonization.
“So this has made all the paperwork a little more streamlined. But, already, John Paul II, with this very rationalization,” the cardinal explained, “had caused an increase in beatifications and canonizations.”
Born in Monteroni di Lecce, a small town in Puglia, a southern province of Italy, the 77-year-old Cardinal Semeraro has been at the helm of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints since the Oct. 15, 2020. He followed Cardinal Angelu Becciu, who had to step down because of a financial scandal regarding the acquisition of a property in London.
Cardinal Semeraro received his academic formation at the Lateran University in Rome, an institute renowned for educating future prelates in the Roman Curia. In 1971, he was ordained a priest and served in the Diocese of Lecce. Under Pope St. John Paul II, he first became bishop of Oria in 1998 and later Albano in 2004. In addition, he assumed the position of secretary of the “council of cardinals” in 2013. Pope Francis created him a cardinal in 2021.
The prefect led his visitors to an office where old papers and more heavy binders were spread out on a large table. The documents encompassed the life of St. Charles Borromeo, handwritten on ancient paper, along with an original signature of St. John XXIII.
The windows were open to allow in a breeze of the warm Roman spring air. The offices of the dicastery are located right next to St. Peter’s Square. Through a window, Bernini’s famous colonnade embracing the piazza, with 140 saint statues adorning the magnificent arc of pillars, can be seen.
“Holiness is not something for heroes, like those from Greek and Roman mythology, such as Prometheus, Ulysses, those great ones,” Cardinal Semeraro said. Holiness should be seen as within the reach of everyone, he emphasized. He then paraphrased St. Augustine: “‘If he did it, I can do it.’ This is the reason, in simple terms, why the Church canonizes people.”
Carlo Acutis’ Big Day
A pair of notable canonizations with mark this year’s Jubilee of Hope. The first, on April 27, is Carlo Acutis, who will be celebrated as the first millennial saint of the Church. The cardinal smiled when he heard the millennial saint-to-be’s name.
“His beatification happened when the Holy Father had just decided and communicated to me to call me to this office. Given my old friendship with him, I had asked him to have time to think about it for a few days, a few weeks, and Carlo Acutis was beatified just that Sunday,” the cardinal revealed. Then, the bishop of Assisi invited him to celebrate Mass on Sunday evening in Assisi. The cardinal also was asked to close the tomb that they had kept open during that week.
“I saw him at that moment like an icon, an image that also the Pope later shared,” he recalled. “It was the picture of a young man, a young monk, carrying on his shoulders an old man, an elderly monk, and I somehow felt that Sunday a little bit like the elderly monk being carried by the young man. And in my first prayer as the new prefect of this dicastery, I asked Carlo Acutis to carry me on his shoulders, as I was old, and to help me walk with his strong legs.”
Compared to other causes, Carlo Acutis’ has been relatively quick to be positively concluded. This does not come as a surprise to Cardinal Semeraro. The young saint’s popularity helped a lot: “See,” the prefect explained, “the more people know about a venerable or blessed person, the more they will ask for his or her intercession.”
This was certainly the case with the second miracle approved and attributed to the young soon-to-be saint. The miracle happened to a girl from Costa Rica in 2022. She had a serious bicycle accident, and she sought the intercession of Carlo Acutis.
“It was what we call a miracle that is decisive for us. The exclusion of human intervention is important, at least as far as current medical knowledge is concerned,” the cardinal explained.
“So there must be something that the doctors say, like: ‘We exclude human intervention for this healing,’” he said. But — he raised his hand to emphasize this point — even more important for the dicastery is a closeness between the prayer and the gift of healing.
“Why do we have this short period of only four years for Carlo Acutis between beatification and [the approval of the] canonization?” the cardinal asked. Obviously, the mother, or relatives of this sick girl knew Carlo Acutis, because they were talking to her about him; she knew about him, and she asked for his help. Cardinal Semeraro pointed out that if nobody knew anything about a person, nobody would call on him. So the knowledge of an exemplary figure is important for a miracle to happen. In this way, Carlo Acutis is also an example of a new kind of saint, as he was well known around the world thanks to modern communication technology before he had even been beatified.
“Not only teenagers, but all of us can learn something from Carlo Acutis,” Cardinal Semeraro said. “On a spiritual level, we need to learn how to detach ourselves from digital realities, to dedicate ourselves to others.”
Carlo Acutis knew how to live not only for himself, but also how to be open to the encounter with others, to give a witness of the Christian faith, he continued to explain. “Carlo Acutis fits into the digital age. He used the computer, the internet and the tools that existed during his life. This period is not far away, but things have quickly changed. In Carlo Acutis' days, for example, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ was a word that didn't mean much to people,” the cardinal said.
The Saint-Making Process
The interview moved to a large meeting room of the dicastery. The cardinal opened the doors and ushered us in. “Is this the room where saints are made,” he was asked.
The cardinal’s expression grew serious. “This is the place where we conclude a journey,” he corrected. “It begins at the local level. In the beginning, we give a nulla osta, a ‘go ahead,’ if there are no obstacles. But the work of the investigation, of the study of the records is done in the dioceses.”
All these findings are then being reviewed in the dicastery. Medical experts and historians are sometimes brought in. “In Italy, we have the saying that two pair of eyes see more than one. That is why every cause is being discussed by several cardinals and bishops here in this room.”
While there are more than 1,500 cases open, of which many date back centuries, every month the prelates discuss an average of six cases. In this room they also decide whether to propose a cause to the Holy Father for approval.
Frassati’s Faith
One of the most recent cases approved positively and whose canonization will also be celebrated during the Jubilee Year is Pier Giorgio Frassati. At first, there was the idea to have a canonization together with Blessed Carlo, said the cardinal: “But they are very different characters. Carlo Acutis belongs to the category of teenagers. When Pier Giorgio Frassati lived, at the beginning of the 1900s, in the context of a world war, conflicts, at the age of 24, he was not considered young anymore.” Blessed Pier Giorgio’s canonization is set to take place during the “Jubilee of Youth” at the beginning of August 2025.
“From Pier Giorgio we can learn a busy life, open to many things, especially on the social side. He chose to study mining engineering to be close to the miners who were emigrating to Belgium at the time. He makes it clear that he made this choice to be close to the poorest in his time.”
Cardinal Semeraro also emphasized Frassati’s love for the Eucharist, the strong sense of friendship — and his provocation to being joyous.
The cardinal looked out the window one last time as the time allotted for the interview drew to a close.
“A joy, which is different from cheerfulness or happiness,” he said. “At least in the Italian language, joy is more than just happiness, which is motivated by external reasons. Joy comes from an inner reality, from having found one’s identity, from having made life choices, and of feeling capable of serious relationships. And from that comes joy. And maybe today we very much need this kind of joy.”
