4. Numerous saints, blesseds, and venerables have testified to the reality and exceptional intercessory power of St. Philomena, including Ven. Pauline Jaricot, Bl. Anna Maria Taigi, St. Peter Julian Eymard, St. Peter Chanel, St. Madeline Sophie Barat, St. Magdalene of Canossa, Bl. Bartolo Longo, Bl. Pope Pius IX, St. Pius X, and especially St. John Vianney. (68) 5. The archeological conclusions of Marucchi which placed in doubt the authenticity of the remains of St. Philomena have received significant refutation by Bonavenia, De Rossi, and others at the time of the controversy, and more recently by Fr. Antonio Ferrua, S.J., Secretary of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archeology. (69) 6. Neither the 1961 directive of the Congregation of Rites to remove St. Philomena from the calendar, nor her omission in the revised Roman Martyrology negatively affect the papally established and ecclesiastically approved popular devotion to St. Philomena that continues with Church sanction in our own day. (70) Moreover, if we examine the present Church process of beatification and canonization, we find the following stages: 1. heroic virtue or martyrdom must be historically established; 2. a miracle must be attributed to the direct intercession of the Servant of God for beatification, which then permits, by papal decree, public veneration in a particular, limited sphere of the Church (usually in the form of a mass and office issued in honor of the blessed); 3. another miracle must be attributed to the blessed, which occurred after the process of beatification, whereby public veneration is, by precept, extended to the universal Church by the pontiff. (71) Beyond the process of formal canonization, there is also "equivalent canonization," where the formal canonical process has not been introduced, but the individual has received more than one hundred years of public veneration and whose sanctity is recognized by the pope. (72) If we apply these contemporary criteria for beatification and canonization to the case of St. Philomena in a more speculative manner, we find: 1. the discovery of the blood vial and the palm branch symbol at her loculus, indicating Christian martyrdom, one of the two criteria for the first stage of canonization (which actually constitutes the highest form of heroic virtue); 2. great numbers of documented miracles took place at the Mugnano Shrine from 1805 to 1837, inclusive of the papally witnessed miraculous cure of Pauline Jaricot, which led to Gregory XVI's decree granting public liturgical cultus to the particular region of Nola (comparable to the liturgical cultus granted to a "blessed"); and 3. a second great quantity of miracles were recorded in Church proceedings, both in Mugnano and in Ars, miracles which occurred in a time period following the granting of particular public veneration, and which included the miraculous cure of St. John Vianney. The papal elevation and extension of the public liturgical cultus of St. Philomena from Nola to other parts of the world, which included the extension of her mass and office to Rome and other dioceses under Bl. Pius IX (Jan. 15, 1857); the erection of the archconfraternity and granting of plenary indulgences in France by Leo XIII (Sept. 24, 1889); and the extending of the archconfraternity of St. Philomena to the universal Church (Pias Fidelium, May 21, 1912), illustrates papal approval for universal cultus and veneration of St. Philomena, a universal veneration only appropriate, by the Church's own standards, for the status of a saint. The words of St. Pius X in his apostolic brief which decreed the Church promulgation of universal public devotion to St. Philomena through the archconfraternity indicate a papal intention of permanence for the universal veneration of St. Philomena by the Christian faithful the world over: "We decree that the present affirmations are and remain always firm, valid, and in effect; in this way, it must be regularly judged; and if anything proceeds in another fashion, it will be null and void, whatever its authority may be." (73) |
