The Conversion of Bartolo Longo
The Vatican announcement, on February 25, 2025, of the upcoming canonization of Bartolo Longo (1841-1926) was more surprising than the average reader may have realized. The one-line biography read: “Blessed Bartolo was a lawyer from Naples who initially despised the Church, but converted and became responsible for establishing the Shrine of the Holy Rosary at Pompeii.”[1] Never before had such strong terms been employed in reference to the past of Blessed Bartolo,[2] who as a student in the 1860s had renounced the faith and become a Satanic priest. Yet had one asked Longo himself, he would immediately have admitted that he had, in fact, been a great sinner. His final words said it all: “My only desire is to see Mary, who saved me and will save me from the clutches of Satan.”[3]
In 1975, when Longo’s virtues had been declared heroic, the Vatican decree had merely said that as a student he attended “sessions in which ghosts were summoned, and his faith was weakening day by day.”[4] The decree approving the miracle for his beatification, in 1980, said even more euphemistically: “Having obtained a doctorate in law, after a brief period of religious neglect, in 1865 he was fully converted to the faith and adhered to Christ and his Church with great ardor.”[5]
In the spirit of the Great Jubilee of 2000, however, the Church began to speak in a new way about the sins and shortcomings of its members. Pope Benedict XVI took the lead in conversing more openly about the dark past of Blessed Bartolo, when he visited the Shrine of Pompeii in 2008. He mentioned his militant anticlericalism, his spiritualistic and superstitious practices, and of course his conversion transforming him “from persecutor to apostle: an apostle of Christian faith, of Marian devotion and, in particular, of the Rosary, in which he found a synthesis of the whole Gospel.”[6] Sixteen years later, Pope Francis also spoke openly about Bartolo Longo as having lost the faith, but by divine intervention had been rescued from a bitter struggle and became an apostle.[7]
So the answer to the question in the title of this article, “Can sinners be saints?,” seems to be positive, even when those sins are of the gravest kind. Yet the example of Saint Bartolo also shows that until recently that answer was far from obvious. As we will try to demonstrate, the way in which the popes of the third millennium have approached this most delicate matter may well be called a paradigm shift in the handling of this particular category of canonical sainthood: the holy penitent.
Early Saints and Sinners
Unsurprised by that one-line biography of Blessed Bartolo Longo, the average reader may have been much more surprised by the question itself, whether sinners can be saints. On the internet there is no lack of popular articles with titles such as “Sins of the Saints,”[8] “Holy Sinners,”[9] or “5 Saints Who Were Notorious Sinners.”[10] They feature St. Paul, of course, the former persecutor of the Church, and St. Matthew, the publican or tax collector called to be an apostle. In fact, Pope Francis chose a phrase from St. Bede’s homily on that conversion story as the motto of his pontificate: “Miserando atque eligendo” – “Jesus saw the tax collector and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me.”[11]
Also from apostolic times is the good thief (who actually may have been a murderer), whose cult dates back to the Patristic Age and who is still commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on March 25. The opening prayer of his Tridentine votive mass summarized the idea behind this cult well, listing the elements of each real conversion and justification, namely God’s mercy and our repentance, both provoked by the infinite love of Jesus Christ: “Almighty and merciful God, who justifies the wicked, we humbly beseech you, that, with the kind glance with which your Only Begotten Son drew the blessed thief, you may provoke us to worthy repentance and grant us that eternal glory which you promised him.”[12]
Other “holy sinners” mentioned on the internet are St. Augustine, who ruefully wrote about the debaucheries of his youth in his Confessions, but also St. Jerome, “the most thin-skinned, short-tempered and cantankerous of the Doctors of the Church.”[13] The classical type, though, embodied in the composite figure that until the postconciliar liturgical reform was St. Mary Magdalene, is that of the promiscuous woman turned penitent, spending her last years as a hermit in the desert, praying and performing works of penance. The most famous examples are the fifth-century St. Mary of Egypt, “a famous sinner of Alexandria,” still commemorated on April 1, and the more legendary St. Pelagia of Jerusalem, “surnamed the penitent,” formerly commemorated on October 8.
As Thomas J. Craughwell points out, “In the early centuries of the Church and all through the Middle Ages, writers were perfectly candid about saints who initially were far from saintly. … [They] gloried in the lives of great sinners who became great saints, because it delivered a very reassuring message: if these people can be saved, then so can you!”[14]
Eight Hundred Years of Heroic Virtue
In his famous study on sainthood in the Late Middle Ages, André Vauchez has shown that the period around 1200 saw the end – at least for the next few centuries – of canonization causes for converts who, in different degrees, had led a sinful life, like St. Francis of Assisi, but also Blessed Laurence Loricatus († 1243), who had killed a man before retiring in a grotto, and Blessed John Good († 1249), a court jester turned hermit. Not only were such penitents no longer proposed for canonization, but the biographies of those already canonized were purged of all that spoke too clearly about their sinful past. By defining holiness in terms of outstanding virtue, heroic virtue even, the Church took a momentous turn away from saints to be imitated to saints to be admired, from “ordinary” to “extraordinary” saints.[15]
Among the more famous candidates to sainthood whose cause came momentarily to a halt were the penitents Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297), who as a young woman had lived unmarried with a man for nine years, bearing him a son, and Angela of Foligno (1248-1309), who up till the age of forty had led an empty life dedicated to worldly pleasures. The former was canonized only in 1728, the latter beatified in 1701 and finally canonized by Pope Francis in 2013. Three years earlier, Pope Benedict XVI, in his catecheses on the saints, had already drawn attention to the importance, not of Angela’s mystical experiences but of her conversion, concluding “that with God alone life becomes true life, because, in sorrow for sin, it becomes love and joy. And this is how Blessed Angela speaks to us.”[16]
But the notion of canonical sanctity began to evolve around 1700. In 1634, Fortunato Scacchi could teach in his book on the signs of such sanctity: “Holiness is purity, immaculate and uncontaminated, free from any sin and perfect in every respect. … [It] requires a soul not only devoid of guilt and stain, but also, as it were, decorated with the exercises, habits, and acts of all virtues in a heroic degree.”[17] In his view, difficulty in the exercise of heroic virtue was already sufficient to disqualify someone as a saint.
A century later, though, Prospero Lambertini – the future Pope Benedict XIV – saw the need to dedicate a whole chapter to the sins sometimes found in the lives of the saints.[18] He distinguished between sins committed before their conversion, and mortal and venial sins committed after their conversion. As sinners of the first category he mentions, among others, King David, the Apostles Peter, Paul and Matthew, Mary Magdalene, the good thief, and Mary of Egypt, and cites a number of eminent theologians who concord that speaking openly about their sins does not demean the saints, but magnifies God’s mercy, and teaches us to not despair in case of similar sins but humbly do penance. In fact, “whether and what fruits of penance they brought forth, whether worthy, whether heroic, and for how long they remained in that happy state of penance,” are all things to be studied in the canonization cause of such servants of God.[19] The last question is difficult to answer, he admits – some say ten, other say twenty years – because each case is different; in the end, it all depends on the quality of the convert’s deeds.
Regarding those who committed mortal or merely venial sins after their conversion, Lambertini refers to Adrien Baillet’s Les vies des saints (1701), calling his openness about the sins of saints “audacious.” Even now, in fact, Baillet strikes the reader with his frankness and balanced approach to the fact that even the saints, with some exceptions, have been prone to sin, too. We should not blush because of their mistakes, he says, but seek to profit from the good they themselves drew from them.[20]
Lambertini, though, did not want to dwell on the sins of the saints, but was interested above all in determining the degree of penance performed by a servant of God after having sinned, necessary to return to the required degree of holiness. In his view, numerous post-conversion venial sins, without proof of penance, seem to be a more certain obstacle to canonization than rare mortal sins with such proof. As to the question why sin seems to be unavoidable even in the lives of the saints, Lambertini refers to “those theologians who teach that the permission of sin in the predestined is actually an effect of their predestination, since as an occasion for humility and greater diligence it benefits them in attaining glory.”[21]
Martyrdom, the ‘baptism of blood’
What Scacchi and Lambertini agree upon as the continuous teaching of the Church is that even the greatest sinner can become a saint when he or she dies a martyr. This supreme act of love, a “baptism of blood,” washes away all sins.[22] Lambertini elaborates upon the requirement of having repented one’s misdeeds before giving one’s life, ideally publicly when the martyr was a notorious sinner. He concludes that “nobody is excluded from the hope to be saved who, even after a life soiled by graver sins, brings forth worthy fruits of penance.”[23] He illustrates this with the example of St. Afra, a prostitute who suffered martyrdom under Diocletian (commemorated on August 7), but he could just as well have mentioned the then Blessed Andrew Wouters (c. 1542-1572), one of the Martyrs of Gorkum, beatified in 1675 (canonized in 1867), whose dossier he must have known.[24] This parish priest had lived in concubinage and fathered several children, but faced with the choice between apostasy and martyrdom, as the last of his companions who had died a brutal death, he bravely declared: “Fornicator I always was; heretic I never was.”[25]
Later centuries saw similar cases of sinners reaching sainthood through martyrdom. Among them must be mentioned St. Bruno Sserunkuuma (c. 1856-1886), one of the Ugandan martyrs, whose adult baptism had not done much to change his life, extortion and bigamy being some of his graver sins. But he converted once more, through the fraternal corrections of St. Charles Lwanga and St. Andrew Kaggwa, and devoted himself to a life of prayer, penance, and works of charity, ready to confess the faith when the persecution of Christians began.[26] He was beatified together with his companions in 1920 and canonized by Pope St. Paul VI in 1964. These were the only saints to be canonized during the Second Vatican Council.
Another example is the Chinese martyr St. Mark Ji Tianxiang (1834-1900), a long-time opium addict who for that reason had been excluded from Holy Communion. In his desperation he declared, “If I am ever to get to heaven, I must suffer martyrdom.”[27] Mark and his companions were beatified in 1955 and canonized by Pope St. John Paul II during the Great Jubilee of 2000.
Given the size of these groups, little or nothing could be said about individual martyrs like Bruno or Mark in the decrees of canonization or the papal homilies given at that occasion. It is striking, though, how in the last decade – possibly influenced by the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy 2016 – the vox populi on the internet has acclaimed St. Bruno as patron of “those tempted to excessive drinking, lust, and those not properly married in the Church,”[28] and invokes the intercession of St. Mark “for all addicts and for all those who are unable to receive the sacraments, that they may have the courage to be faithful to the Church and that they may always grow in their love for and trust in the Lord.”[29]
Sin: a benefit to attain glory?
Lambertini adhered to the common opinion of theologians that God allows those whom He predestines to sainthood to sin, since it helps them to grow in humility and religious fervor. Among the authors he refers to is St. Augustine, who in his Enchiridion (no. 8) states that “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist,” the greater good obtained being the demonstration of his mercy by forgiving our sins. He also quotes the famous Palm Sunday homily of St. Francis de Sales, in which the latter pleads to take note of the faults of the saints instead of obfuscating them, “not only to recognize the goodness that God has extended in pardoning them, but also to teach us to abhor and to avoid them, and to do penance for them, just as they did.”[30]
Many others could be cited, like St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who in his second sermon on Psalm 90, “Qui habitat,” confirms that God in a wondrous way brings about justice for the righteous through their sins, because it makes them more humble and prudent.[31] St. Thomas Aquinas concurs where he states that “God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom,”[32] a thesis confirmed by a vision had by the fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich in which God allowed the youthful St. John of Beverley († 721) “to fall, mercifully keeping him that he perished not, nor lost no time. And afterward God raised him to manifold more grace, and by the contrition and meekness that he had in his living, God hath given him in Heaven manifold joys, overpassing that [which] he should have had if he had not fallen.”[33]
Sin in the lives of the saints, one might summarize, is in itself, of course, most displeasing to God, but is allowed for pedagogical reasons: it teaches both them and us, called to imitate the saints, the necessary lessons of humility, penance, divine mercy, and greater fervor in the service of God. This opinion is confirmed in our age by the Bishops of Rome, like Blessed Pope John Paul I, who in his first audience stated: “[T]he Lord loves humility so much that, sometimes, he permits serious sins. Why? In order that those who committed these sins may, after repenting remain humble.”[34] In that sense, our constant need of conversion is the mirror image of God’s endless mercy, evoked so eloquently by Pope Francis in his Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee of Mercy.[35]
Pope Francis summarized the Church’s doctrine on sin and holiness well in that same Jubilee Year, when he reflected on the calling of the Apostle Matthew, so dear to him: “By calling Matthew, Jesus shows sinners that he does not look at their past, at their social status, at external conventions, but rather, he opens a new future to them. I once heard a beautiful saying: ‘There is no saint without a past nor a sinner without a future.’ […] The Church is not a community of perfect people, but of disciples on a journey, who follow the Lord because they know they are sinners and in need of his pardon. Thus, Christian life is a school of humility which opens us to grace.”[36]
The Holy Penitent: a mission
As we have said before, the classical type of the “holy sinner” has been for ages the composite figure of St. Mary Magdalene, in whom ever since the Patristic Age were conflated Mary of Magdala, Mary of Bethany,[37] and the unnamed sinful woman (a prostitute or adulteress) who anointed Jesus’ feet.[38] The postconciliar liturgical reform restored to this great saint her true identity,[39] and Pope Francis, in 2016, elevated her liturgical memorial to the rank of feast.[40]
Yet more important for our purpose than the historical truth about Mary Magdalene is the intuition of Pope Leo XIII, confirmed by Pope St. Pius X when reforming the liturgical books, that the figure as such, which until then had remained uncategorized – neither virgin, martyr nor widow – actually did fit into a category, a new category, namely that of penitent, a title first given to her in the revised Roman Missal of 1884. St. Margaret of Cortona was fitted in that category too, but curiously enough not St. Mary of Egypt, whose votive mass was eventually suppressed in 1911. The Tridentine opening prayers of these saints’ votive masses are perfect “profile sketches” of the penitent, accentuating God’s mercy without obfuscating the saints’ sins. On St. Margaret’s intercession the Church begged “that, whereas before we were not ashamed to follow the erring one, we may soon glory in diligently following the penitent.”[41] As for St. Mary, the theologically rich first part of her opening prayer has been re-used in 1969 in that of the 26th Ordinary Sunday: “O God, who manifest your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy…”
What may seem a detail concerning only a few saints was actually part of a broader development which culminated in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on the Church, as expressed in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium (LG). On the one hand, it recognized that “the Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal” (LG 8); on the other hand, it defined canonical sanctity and the holiness to which all are called no longer primarily in terms of heroic virtues, of a series of extraordinary acts to be executed, but as “the fullness of the Christian life” and “the perfection of charity” (LG 40): “Everyone must walk unhesitantly according to their own personal gifts and duties”; thus they “will daily increase in holiness, if they receive all things with faith from the hand of their heavenly Father and if they cooperate with the divine will” (LG 41).[42] Analyzing these themes some fifty years later, Henk Witte envisaged the flowering of many different saintly ways of life, which express the infinite sanctity of Jesus Christ in the concreteness of our (post) modern human existence, as long as we avoid confusing holiness with perfection.[43]
Holiness is not “a goal reserved for a few elect,” Pope Benedict XVI explained in his catechesis on the topic; all are asked “to open themselves to the action of the Holy Spirit …, even when we feel poor, inadequate, sinners. It will be He who transforms us in accordance with his love.”[44] This thought is further developed by Pope Francis in his 2018 Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (GE), the first papal document dedicated entirely to the universal call to holiness. The saints are not there be copied, he says: “Each saint is a mission, planned by the Father to reflect and embody, at a specific moment in history, a certain aspect of the Gospel” (GE 19). Most relevant for our purpose is the pope’s assertion that not everything a saint says or does is perfect, but that we need to consider “the totality of their life, their entire journey of growth in holiness” (GE 22).
Here, the holy penitent fits in. What other aspect of the Gospel, what other mystery of Christ’s life does he or she embody, if not the central aspect and mystery of God’s mercy and our conversion? “Every saint is a message which the Holy Spirit takes from the riches of Jesus Christ and gives to his people” (GE 21), wrote Pope Francis. The holy penitents are – possibly even more than the martyrs whose sins were forgiven through the shedding of their blood – a message of divine mercy, lived out in a life of penance and of works of charity, corporal and spiritual. Appositely, when St. Mary Magdalene was still considered a penitent, on her feast the Gospel was read in which Jesus says about the woman washing and anointing his feet: “I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much” (Luke 7:47).
‘O happy fault’
In 2017, Pope Francis introduced a new category of canonical sanctity, namely that of the free offering or oblation of one’s life.[45] It opened to way to canonization for those who had laid down their life for their brothers and sisters, without meeting either the criteria for martyrs or for confessors.[46] It shows how in modern times in the causes of the saints attention has grown for the action of the Holy Spirit bringing forth new models of holiness.
The holy penitent may be counted among these models. Even though it is currently not represented on the General Roman Calendar (the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul comes closest to it[47]), various recently canonized cases exist already on a local level, like St. Angela of Foligno and Saint Bartolo Longo. Others are awaiting canonization, such as Venerable Matt Talbot (1856-1925), an alcoholic turned ascetic, or the Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897-1980), whose pre-conversion bohemian life included an abortion. They all show that the model of the holy penitent is as relevant in the third millennium as it was in the first, ever since Jesus said about the (other?) woman who anointed his feet: “Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her” (Matt 26:13) The good thief was not the only one to be ‘canonized’ by Jesus himself, nor will he be the last to be exalted as a mission of divine mercy by the Church, which every year again, at the start of the Easter Vigil jubilates: “O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer.”[48]
The holy penitents are thus further models to encourage all Christians in holiness, to which Pope Leo XIV invited young people, and all of us. In fact, at Tor Vergata, on August 3, 2025, he appealed in his homily: “Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are. Do not settle for less. You will then see the light of the Gospel growing every day, in you and around you.”[49]
Reproduced with permission from La Civiltà Cattolica.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32009/22072446.0226.8
[1]. “Pope Francis paves the way for new saints”, in Vatican News (vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-02/pope-francis-paves-the-way-for-new-saints.html) February 25, 2025.
[2]. Bartolo Longo was canonized by Pope Leo XIV on October 19, 2025.
[3]. “How a sworn Satanist became the apostle of the Rosary”, in Catholic News Agency (catholicnewsagency.com/news/31607/satanism-pompeii-and-the-rosary-a-bizarre-tale-surrounds-francis-next-trip), October 7, 2021.
[4]. Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS) 67 (1975) 747.
[5]. AAS 72 (1980) 555.
[6]. Benedict XVI, Homily during the pastoral visit to the Pontifical Sanctuary at Pompei, October 19, 2008.
[7]. Cf. Francis, Message on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the image of Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompei, October 7, 2024.
[8]. T. J. Craughwell, “Sins of the Saints”, in Catholic Herald (thecatholicherald.com/sins-of-the-saints), August 6, 2015.
[9]. “Holy sinners: here are the most famous conversions”, in Holyart Blog (www.holyart.com/blog/saints-and-blessed/holy-sinners-here-are-the-most-famous-conversions), March 1, 2023.
[10]. P. Kosloski, “5 Saints who were notorious sinners”, in Aleteia (aleteia.org/2016/08/24/5-saints-who-were-notorious-sinners), August 24, 2016.
[11]. St. Bede’s homily features in the Office of Readings on the Feast of St. Matthew.
[12]. Missale Romanum ex decreto SS. Concilii Tridentini restitutum, S. Pii V. pontificis maximi jussu editum, Clementis VIII., Urbani VIII. et Leonis XIII. auctoritate recognitum, Romae et al.: Desclée et Socii, 1914, 160.
[13]. T. J. Craughwell, “Sins of the Saints”, op. cit.
[14]. Ibid.; Cf. the same author’s Saints Behaving Badly: The Cutthroats, Crooks, Trollops, Con Men, and Devil-Worshippers Who Became Saints, New York et al., Doubleday, 2006.
[15]. Cf. A. Vauchez, La sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques, Rome, École Française de Rome, 1981, 600-608; Cf. J. L. Peterson, Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics. Disputed Sanctity and Communal Identity in Late Medieval Italy, Ithaca – London, Cornell University Press, 2019, 29-30.
[16]. Benedict XVI, General Audience, October 13, 2010.
[17]. F. Scacchi, De cultu et veneratione servorum Dei liber primus, qui est: De notis et signis sanctitatis beatificandorum et canonizandorum, Romae: Ex typographia Vitalis Mascardi, 1634, 16.
[18]. Cf. P. Lambertini, De servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizazione, vol. III, Bononiae: Formis Longhi excursoris archiepiscopalis, 1737, 572-586. For a good summary of the evolution of the canonical concept of holiness of confessors, see: H. Misztal, Le cause di canonizzazione. Storia e procedura, Città del Vaticano, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005, 54-60.
[19]. Cf. P. Lambertini, De servorum Dei beatificatione, 574.
[20]. A. Baillet, Les vies des saints, vol I, Paris, Jean de Nully, 1715, 85.
[21]. P. Lambertini, De servorum Dei beatificatione, 577-579.
[22]. Cf. F. Scacchi, De cultu et veneratione servorum Dei, 23. Lambertini, De servorum Dei beatificatione, 156-158.
[23]. P. Lambertini, De servorum Dei beatificatione, 161-162.
[24]. Once pope, Lambertini added the Martyrs of Gorkum, even though they were still blessed, to the 1748 edition of the Roman Martyrology.
[25]. D. de Lange, De Martelaren van Gorkum, Utrecht-Antwerpen, Spectrum, 1954.
[26]. Cf. “St. Bruno Sserunkuuma”, in Uganda Martyrs Shrine (www.munyonyo-shrine.ug/martyrs/other-uganda-martyrs/st-bruno-sserunkuuma/).
[27]. J. Wang Yu-Jung, The Newly Canonized Martyr-Saints of China, Taiwan, ROC, Episcopal Commission for Canonization of Saints and Martyrs of China, 2000, 41-42.
[28]. The vox populi is supported by the authority of the website of the Archdiocese of Kampala, Uganda, (klarchdiocese.org.ug/about-us/the-uganda-martyrs/st-bruno-sserunkuuma).
[29]. M. Hunter-Kilmer, “He was an opium addict who couldn’t receive the sacraments, but he’s a martyr and a saint”, in Aleteia (https://aleteia.org/2017/07/06/he-was-an-opium-addict-who-couldnt-receive-the-sacraments-but-hes-a-martyr-and-a-saint), July 6, 2017.
[30]. “St. Francis de Sales’ Homily for Palm Sunday”, in Visitation Spirit (visitationspirit.org/2016/03/st-francis-de-sales-homily-for-palm-sunday), March 2016.
[31]. Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, Les psaumes commentés: Sur le Psaume 90 “Qui habite”, Abbaye Notre-Dame de Timadeuc, 2020, 7-8.
[32]. T. Aquinas, Summa Theologica III, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3.
[33]. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ch. 14, sec. 12 (www.ccel.org/ccel/julian/revelations.xiv.xii.html).
[34]. John Paul I, General Audience, September 6, 1978.
[35]. Pope Francis, Bull Misericordiae vultus, April 11, 2015, no. 25.
[36]. Pope Francis, General Audience, April 13, 2026.
[37]. Cf. Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, Decree on the Celebration of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus in the General Roman Calendar (vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20210126_decreto-santi_en.html), January 26, 2021.
[38]. S. Haskins, Mary Magdalen. Myth and Metaphor, London, HarperCollinsPublishers, 1993, 3-32.
[39]. Thus Calendarium Romanum, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1969, 131: “No change has been made in the title of today’s memorial, but it concerns only Saint Mary Magdalenee, to whom Christ appeared after his resurrection. It is not about the sister of Saint Martha, nor about the sinful woman whose sins the Lord forgave.”
[40]. Cf. Press Office of the Holy See, “Decreto della Congregazione per il Culto Divino e la Disciplina dei Sacramenti: la celebrazione di Santa Maria Maddalena elevata al grado di festa nel Calendario Romano Generale”, in Bolletino (press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2016/06/10/160610b.html), June 10, 2016.
[41]. Missale Romanum, 1914, xxv, 146*, 162*. Missale Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, S. Pii V pontificis maximi jussu editum, aliorumque pontificum cura recognitum, a Pio X reformatum et Benedicti XV auctoritate vulgatum, Romae et al.: Typis Societatis S. Joannis Evangelistae et al., 1948, 716, [171], [183].
[42]. Cf. H. Misztal, Le cause di canonizzazione, 60-69.
[43]. Cf. H. Witte, “Heilig of perfect? Gedachten over de algemene roeping tot heiligheid”, Communio 38 (2013), 402-410.
[44]. Benedict XVI, General Audience, April 13, 2011.
[45]. Cf. Francis, Apostolic Letter Maiorem hac dilectionem, July 11, 2017.
[46]. One reason to consider this innovation was the canonization cause of Salvo D’Acquisto (1920-1943). In 2007, a majority vote at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints led to a suspension of the recognition of martyrdom, yet the heroicity of the virtues of the young gendarme could not be demonstrated either.
[47]. The Order of St. Augustine has a Feast of the Conversion of St. Augustine, too, celebrated on April 24.
[48]. Already St. Ambrose, in his Commentary on Psalm 39, spoke of the “fortunate fall” of Adam, in that his sin brought more good to humanity than if he had stayed perfectly innocent. Elsewhere he said: “We who have sinned more have gained more, because your grace [of mercy, Lord] makes us more blessed than our absence of fault does” (Commentary on Psalm 37, 47).
[49]. Leo XIV, Homily at the Mass for the Jubilee of Youth, August 3, 2025.
