Report: There are 3,344 candidates for sainthood in Spain

Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, commented on the report in an article in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper. “The history of the Church has been enriched by the lives of men and women born in Spain who, proclaimed saints, have exercised an immense influence,” he writes. He mentions Sts. Dominic Guzmán, Ignatius of Loyola, Anthony Maria Claret, Teresa of Ávila, and John of the Cross, “just to name a few.” This report, he points out, shows that holiness is still present in that country today.

And in fact, the number of causes -- despite being so many -- is actually much smaller than the number of people, because sometimes candidates for sainthood are grouped together. This is especially the case when they were martyred at roughly the same time and under similar circumstances. On June 18 of this year, for example, Pope Leo XIV approved the beatification of “Servants of God Juan Torres Torres and 19 companions.” This is a group of 20 Spanish priests killed in the diocese of Ibiza in August and September of 1936, during the Spanish Civil War.

In fact, martyrs of that conflict constitute 2,404 of the 3,344 candidates for canonization at present, the CEE explains on its website. They account for 48 of the causes. An additional 45 martyrs from other circumstances are also on the list, constituting another five causes.

But martyrs are only part of the picture. There are 292 open causes referring to cases of holiness based on virtues, and one based on “offering of life.” There’s also one proposed “equipolent canonization”: when someone has long been considered a saint, but they lived so long ago that it’s impossible to obtain the documentation for a standard process.

The people under consideration for beatification and canonization come from 57 of Spain’s 70 dioceses. They represent every path of Christian life: bishops, priests, deacons, seminarians, lay men and women including moms and dads, as well as young adults and children. Founders of religious and secular institutes make up 82 of the causes.

There are 42 causes still at the initial diocesan stage (local investigation) and 148 Servants of God in the Roman phase (when the cause already has initial approval from the Vatican); 2,449 of the people in the report have already been beatified but not yet canonized.

These remarkable numbers remind us that holiness is not a thing of the past, nor a path reserved for a special few. In its article on the report, the Spanish Episcopal Conference’s Office for the Causes of Saints echoes recent words of Pope Leo XIV: “Holiness is neither one option among many nor an abstract ideal, for it involves the very identity of every person who wishes to share in the life of the risen One.”