Religion and Politics

Popes Making Popes Saints

At The New York Review of Books, Garry Wills discusses the often-controversial process of popes beatifying other popes. In light of Pope Francis promoting John Paul II, Wills accuses the papacy of using the canonization process to their own advantage: “It gives the pope a kind of back-door infallibility,” he writes. “Each stamp of entry into heaven above authenticates the pope’s power of the stamp here below. And each time a pope canonizes a pope he is completing a circuit of reciprocal authentications. Is it surprising that so many popes have been canonized?”

Read at The New York Review of Books

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