Pope John Paul II: To Saint or Not to Saint?

Pope Benedict XVI recently issued a decree saying that the late Pope John Paul II exhibited "heroic virtues" and calling him "venerable," thereby putting him one step closer to becoming a saint, according to CNN.

So what's the process from here? How does one become a saint?

In order to make it into that special order, the pope's intervention must be proved to have caused a miracle, at which point he will be declared "blessed," otherwise known as being beatified. After that, if it can be demonstrated that he brought about a second miracle, he can be officially canonized, otherwise known as being made into a saint.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said it's impossible to determine the length of that process. "This is a fundamental step in the road toward sainthood," he told CNN. "Now comes the examination of a miracle, which is the proof of the divine interceding power of John Paul II on behalf of God."

It used to be that there had to be a five-year waiting period between a person's death and beatification. But in 1999, John Paul himself granted a special dispensation for Mother Teresa, letting her progress toward sainthood begin just two years after she died. Several months after John Paul II died in 2005 at the age of 84, Pope Benedict XVI also dispensed with the five-year rule and opened the path for his predecessor's beatification.

Photo courtesy of Beyond Forgetting, via Flickr