Saints: our brothers and sisters

I'm grateful to Rocco, the wizard at Whispers, for doing the work this morning and offering us a summary of the announcements made at the Vatican today regarding the progress of some of our brothers and sisters on their path towards being declared saints of the Church:

• Miracles to green-light the canonizations of Blesseds Mary MacKillop (who'll become Australia's first saint) and Andre Bessette, the Holy Cross brother and founder of Montreal's St Joseph Oratory;

• the martyrdom "in odium fidei" of Fr (now Blessed-to-be) Jerzy Popieluzsko, the chaplain to the Polish Solidarity movement who was killed by the country's Communist authorities in 1984;
  

• and, most prominently of all, the heroic virtues of not one, but two pontiffs: Karol Wojtyla, better known as John Paul II... and Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, whose cause has sparked a significant amount of protest among Jewish leaders amid charges that the wartime Pope failed to do enough to avert the Holocaust. (While John Paul's heroic virtue was reportedly approved unanimously by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints last month, Pius' decree has been pending before Benedict since it, too, was green-lighted by the dicastery's entire membership in May 2007.) Both now become "Venerable," their causes now permitted to present a first miracle in order to progress to beatification -- which, in the case of John Paul, could come as soon as next year.
  

• And lastly, with the Pope slated to visit the UK next fall, likewise advanced was the cause of now-Venerable Mary Ward (1585-1645), the English foundress of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Inspired to start an Ignatian community for women in the spirit of the Jesuits -- one that, shockingly for its time, would be free from the obligations of the enclosure and a "specific" habit -- Ward's declaration, like MacKillop's, recognizes a life that endured ecclesiastical hardball; her community was suppressed in 1630, and only re-established sixty years after her death.