Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn't, and Why

In a book the laity has awaited for 2000 years, Newsweek religion editor Woodward penetrates the esoteric process by which the Roman Catholic Church makes saints. He opens with the ``local politics of sainthood'' as exemplified in the candidacies of New Yorkers Terence Cardinal Cooke, who died in 1982 and whose cause is moving forward, and Dorothy Day, who died in 1980 and is unlikely to become one of the elect even though ``she did for her era what St. Francis of Assisi did for his.'' We're taken inside the Vatican office of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, whose denizens grapple with the complexities of canonization. We learn of the expense engendered by research into candidates' lives, the focus on required miracles, the rivalries of scholarly promoters. Canonization may strike some as an imprimatur for culthood but as Woodward shows, even in today's secular society saints matter. (Nov.)