Is the Catholic Canonization Process Corrupt?

Most any conversation about Dorothy Day’s potential canonization reaches a point when someone will exclaim, “The process is so corrupt!” But what does that statement mean? Many people imagine corruption in the canonization process as someone bringing a bag of money to the Vatican to have their mother/aunt/grandparent canonized. Sorry, no evidence for that.

Then come the rejoinders, “It just costs too much!” and “Only wealthy dioceses and religious orders have the money to complete the process!” Fair enough. Pope Francis himself attempted to address these issues in 2016 when he announced new controls to prevent fraud and embezzlement and strengthened use of the Vatican’s Solidarity Fund for low-income causes.

This package of reforms also required each cause to create a fund with an administrator, regular accounting, annual budgets and reports, as well as review by the local bishop or religious superior. When I coordinated Dorothy Day’s cause, I was paid through such a fund at the Archdiocese of New York. My experience of this fund (2014-2021) was strange.

To start, my paychecks appeared to be personal checks and had no stubs. They were written outside of the normal payroll process by an archdiocesan finance officer who administered several special funds which stand outside the archdiocesan budget. When she returned home to Ireland for six weeks each summer, I would not receive a paycheck until she got back.

Despite my boss’ pleas for access to the financial records, he was rarely allowed a peek. As a result, four of my paychecks bounced. Weird, opaque, but not necessarily corruption. The Dorothy Day Guild became a separately incorporated 501(c)(3) organization in 2023 partly because of these peculiarities and is now fully financially transparent.

So what do we mean by the word “corruption”? Let’s consult an expert: Tammany Hall politician George Washington Plunkitt. His distinction between “honest graft” and “dishonest graft,” is instructive. In his 1905 autobiography, Plunkitt differentiated between “dishonest graft” (blackmail, embezzlement, illegal gambling and the like) and “honest graft” (using one’s connections and insider knowledge to make a buck). “Dishonest graft” in public life is abhorrent, according to Plunkitt, while “honest graft” is completely acceptable, even admirable. He posed the example of buying otherwise useless land where one learns a public park will be sited, then selling the land to the government once the proposed park is approved. He proudly claimed to have become rich through “honest graft.”

I did encounter “honest graft” working on Dorothy Day’s canonization. When I complained about the additional 2.5 centimeters of left margin we were required to add to every page of evidence we submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, a Vatican source explained, “You see, the print shop that collects the evidence into 250-page books uses a very tight binding. Some of the text would get lost in the gutter.”

“Why not use a print shop that’s better at binding books?” I asked. “Well…. the owner is the brother of someone who works at the Vatican,” they responded. “What would happen if we used conventional margins?” I asked. We had spent two years copying thousands of pages of Dorothy’s publications onto double-sided letter size paper using commonly accepted margins.

“Then they will just return the evidence to you. And you’ll need to recopy these articles onto single-sided A4 paper,” they added. “That’s what they use at the Vatican.” Plunkitt would have been impressed.

In her excellent 2025 memoir, “Struck Down, Not Destroyed”, journalist Colleen Dulle revealed that the family of Dr. Andrea Ambrosi, postulator to some of the most celebrated sainthood causes of the last fifty years (like Pope John XXIII and Bishop Fulton Sheen), ran three print shops that did all of the printing and binding work for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

When Pope Francis began his reforms of the Vatican Bank, Ambrosi’s accounts were frozen. They totaled over one million Euros. And yet his family’s businesses still do most of the printing for today’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Moreover, the Dicastery’s policy requiring sainthood causes to hire postulators from an approved list of canon lawyers living in Rome has a more than a whiff of “honest graft.”

The question of expense also deserves further consideration. Experts have estimated that Dorothy’s cause will ultimately cost one million Euros (about 1.15 million dollars). That may sound like an excessive amount. But, spread out since 1997 (over 29 years, under $35,000/year), is that an unjust total?

Was it unjust for me to charge the Guild for my work? Should I have worked half time for seven years without pay? Was it unjust that we paid a court reporter to transcribe the testimony of bishops and people who knew Dorothy well?

You get the idea—paying professionals for professional services is not corruption. It’s a shame making saints is so expensive, but the cost alone does not reflect malfeasance.

Another dimension of cost, however, is eyebrow raising--how the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints collects revenue. A month after shipping 2/3 ton of evidence to the Holy See, we received a bill from the Dicastery for “receiving the boxes.” Six months later, we received a second bill for “opening the boxes.” Who knew the Church employs “junk fees”? Ticketmaster would be impressed!

Back to the central question—is the canonization process corrupt? We’ve identified “honest graft,” which many Americans would call “insider trading,” a hefty price tag, a lack of transparency in funding causes that could indicate either sloppiness or “dishonest graft,” and some sketchy “junk fees.” Should we then dismiss the whole system as corrupt?

At the end of the day, the canonization process appears to be imperfect and in need of reform, but not fatally flawed. Dismissing the entire process as corrupt, rather than working to purify it, seems a lazy response. Better to root out the corruption we have identified and expand aid to low-income causes. Such a key dimension of Catholic life deserves no less.

Writer and comics creator Jeffry Odell Korgen coordinated the local phase of the canonization process for Dorothy Day, Servant of God for the Archdiocese of New York.

He is the author of Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion (Paulist Press, 2024), a graphic biography for adults illustrated by Christopher Cardinale.