Catholics who had been eagerly looking forward to the canonization Mass of Blessed Carlo Acutis on Sunday, April 27—and, in many cases, had been making plans to travel to Rome for the occasion—will have to adjust their expectations. Following the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday, the Vatican announced that Acutis’s canonization had been delayed indefinitely.
“Following the death of the Supreme Pontiff Francis, it is announced that the Eucharistic Celebration and the Rite of canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis, scheduled to take place on 27 April 2025, Second Sunday of Easter or Divine Mercy Sunday, on the occasion of the Jubilee of Teenagers, is suspended,” the Holy See Press Office wrote in a statement on the day of Francis’ death.
The reason? The Vatican considers canonization to be an infallible act—which can only be performed by a pope. Acutis’s canonization is therefore on hold until the conclusion of the upcoming papal conclave, a process not expected to be complete for several weeks.
Due to the uncertainty surrounding the timing of the selection of a new pope, no date has been given for Acutis’s rescheduled canonization Mass.
Given the disappointment that this postponement is bound to cause for Catholics already grieving the death of their spiritual father, it behooves us to ask: Why does the church require a pope to perform the act of canonization?
When the church declares someone to be a saint, it not only raises up the person as a model of “heroic virtue” and as an example for all Catholics to follow in their own lives; it further asserts that the person is known to be in heaven, their soul united with God. To make such a definitive claim about the state of a human being’s soul requires the most robust possible invocation of the church’s theological authority, and the surest possible protection against error. For Catholics, this authority and this inerrancy are guaranteed in the person of the pope, who, under the doctrine of papal infallibility, is held to be divinely protected against promulgating falsehoods when speaking on matters of faith and morals.
The 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia, written several decades after the doctrine of papal infallibility was laid out at the First Vatican Council, turns to St. Thomas Aquinas for clarity on the role of papal infallibility in canonization: “In Quodlib. IX, a. 16, St. Thomas says: ‘Since the honour we pay the saints is in a certain sense a profession of faith, i.e., a belief in the glory of the Saints, we must piously believe that in this matter also the judgment of the Church is not liable to error.’ These words of St. Thomas, as is evident from the authorities just cited, all favouring a positive infallibility, have been interpreted by his school in favour of papal infallibility in the matter of canonization.” Since only a pope can perform an infallible act, no canonization can take place during a period of sede vacante.
Conversely, beatifications are not infallible acts—and can therefore be performed by clergy other than the pope, although they do require the pope’s approval—as they are simply, as the Catholic Encyclopedia states, “permissions to venerate” a deceased figure, not definitive assertions regarding the person’s holiness or salvation. For example, Blessed Carlo Acutis was beatified in Assisi in 2020 with Cardinal Agostino Vallini presiding; similarly, St. Óscar Romero was canonized in Rome but beatified several years earlier in his home country of El Salvador, with Cardinal Angelo Amato presiding.
Francis, however, was personally involved with Acutis’s case throughout its stages of progress. In May 2024, Francis recognized Acutis’s fulfillment of the requirement of two miracles for sainthood. “He did not settle into comfortable inaction, but grasped the needs of his time because in the weakest he saw the face of Christ,” Francis said of the Italian teenager at the time of his beatification. “His witness shows today’s young people that true happiness is found by putting God first and serving Him in our brothers, especially the least.”
While Acutis’s canonization will have to wait for now, the many pilgrims headed to Rome for the weekend still have a wide range of spiritual activities in which to partake—even apart from Francis’ funeral, set for Saturday, April 26. The Vatican Dicastery for Evangelization had organized a Jubilee of Teenagers for the weekend of Acutis’s canonization, with over 80,000 young people from around the world expected to attend. The jubilee is still set to take place, but will revolve instead around a pilgrimage to the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica.
