Ep 48 - The Urgent More Urgent and Most Urgent Need For Saints

AT THE SOLEMN CANONIZATION OF THE BLESSED CONFESSORS JOHN THE BAPTIST M. VIANNEY AND JOHN EUDES, HELD IN THE VATICAN BASILICA, ON MAY 31, 1925, ON THE FEAST OF PENTECOST

To the threefold request made urgently, more urgently, most urgently by the Consistorial Advocate Augustus Milani, by His Eminence P. D. Antonio Card. Vico, Postulator of Canonization, the Most Reverend D. Nicolaus Sebastiani, Secretary of Letters to Princes, in the name of His Holiness, responded as follows:

I. You who have asked for the enumeration of the blessed confessors John Baptist Vianney and John Eudes among the saints of heaven, are certainly not ignorant of the great pleasure of the mind which the Most Blessed Father, on the three feast days just preceding, received from the decisive sentences issued on a similar matter. You also easily understand that the cause which is being discussed today cannot fail to give the greatest joy to the supreme Teacher of the faith and to the universal Catholic name, and to bring the best hope of salutary fruits; for these solemnities are intended to present those two most splendid lights of the priestly office and apostolate to be venerated and imitated, especially by both clergy. For the other of them, known and called less by his paternal surname than by the humble village where he practiced medicine, so reformed his flock, almost alien to the institution of Christian life, not indeed by polished words of art but by ardent charity, and especially by insistent prayers and tears before God, that he brought them to an inner union with God. And moreover, for a period of forty years, having admitted expiations in the tribunal, he was such a counselor, a comforter of the afflicted, a healer of souls overwhelmed by guilt, and an instigator of all perfection, that more than seventy thousand people flocked to him from all sides every year, as he persevered in his ministry, even sixteen hours a day, in a kind of perpetual pilgrimage. But the other blessed man, whom the Society of Religious of Jesus and Mary, and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, both greatly glory in as their Founder and Lawgiver, was heard by all of Gaul as a most eloquent orator and a wonderful herald of eternal truths; and, just as he himself never ceased to preach to the people, and sometimes by the prodigies of things he turned broken souls to repentance, so multitudes of men, not deterred by the roughness of the sky, nor the length of the journeys, nor by the difficulties, were wont to flock thither, wherever he expounded on divine things, to renounce their crimes at his feet, and to receive themselves to a good harvest. The Pontiff therefore does not hesitate to number both blessed men among the saints of heaven; nevertheless, he declares that he wishes that, in order to obtain for themselves the gifts of divine wisdom, as many as are present should intercede for them with the intercession of the entire heavenly Curia.

II. Before the Most Blessed Father grants your repeated request, he desires that the Holy Spirit's greater light be implored for him here in common.

III. Since the Most Blessed Father is now certain that what pleases him is also pleasing to God, to whose glory he turns whatever honor is bestowed on men in the praise of holiness, he will immediately issue a decisive sentence that will fulfill the long-awaited common desire. Listen, therefore, to Peter speaking in Pio, with attentive ears and minds, with reverent attention.

Therefore, the sentence was passed, in which he added the birthday of both holy confessors, not the Pope, namely, for Saint John the Baptist Mary Vianney on August 4, and for Saint John Eudes on August 19, a Papal Mass was celebrated on the Feast of Pentecost, and in it was