VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (UK)
By Nick Squires, Rome 10 Mar 2016
Pope Francis launched a stern crackdown on the murky, secretive process of canonisations on Thursday, months after a scandal engulfed a Vatican department nicknamed “the Saints’ Factory”.
The Pope imposed strict new regulations demanding much greater transparency and accountability in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which handles the complex, opaque world of promoting worthy Catholics to sainthoods.
The 23 new rules included a warning that disciplinary measures will be taken against anyone suspected of abusing the system.
The new regime was introduced after leaked Vatican documents published last year revealed that the process was rife with waste, nepotism, favouritism and corruption, with wealthy patrons spending hundreds of thousands of pounds to have their favoured candidate made a saint.
A process designed to elevate worthy candidates to the highest pedestal in the Catholic firmament was found to be anything but saintly in the way that it carried out its business.
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