Q. I was surprised at your answer that the Pope is infallible when beatifying someone. As the enclosed entries on beatification and canonization in a Catholic dictionary indicate, the Pope is infallible only when he canonizes someone, not when he declares a person blessed. -- C.B., Ohio

 

A. You are correct and we thank you for bringing this to our attention. In his book The Making of Saints (Our Sunday Visitor), Michael Freze explains that “beatification has traditionally been defined as 'a restricted form of canonization.' This view was held because the Church felt that beatification was not a final judgment or evaluation about the servant of God in question, but rather the first solemn declaration about a servant of God that satisfied the requirements for veneration at least on a local level or within the confines of a particular Religious Order” (pp. 91-92).
He says that “since beatification was an ecclesiastical judgment designed for an approved cult only in a restricted area, the Pope was not exercising infallible judgment since it did not pertain to a universal cultus. Furthermore, the approved cult granted through a beatification reflected the Church's law and practice that the local bishop – who unlike the Pope had limited ecclesiastical authority – was the immediate authority over that cult for his particular diocesan jurisdiction, and not for the universal Church. Thus, the cult approved under the authority of a particular bishop was the first step toward the goal of approving that same cult universally through the final judgment of the Pope” (p. 92).
Because beatification is only the first stage in the canonization process, says Freze, and “more investigations could prove negative in other areas concerning the life, deeds, and miraculous claims of the servant of God,” beatification is not an infallible act. He says that only the formal canonization has been “looked upon as a definitive, infallible decision on the part of the Pope which could not be undone. By his decision to canonize someone, it was believed that the Holy Spirit had guided that decision after careful investigation, study, discussion, and judgment” (p. 95).