Two Miracles & 40 Saints

The fiercest anti-Catholics of 1960 look like models of moderation beside the An glicans of 16th and 17th century England.

Jesuit Edmund Campion was "cruelly distent" on the rack, and his fingernails were pulled out before he was executed. For permitting Mass to be said in her private chapel. Catholic Convert Margaret Clitherow was pressed to death and, according to a witness, "was in dying one-quarter of an hour. A sharp stone as much as a man's fist was put under her back; upon her was laid the quantity of seven or eight hundredweight at the least, which breaking her ribs caused them to burst through her skin.'' Altogether, from 1585 to 1680, about 360 British Roman Catholics were tortured and killed.

As early as 1594, Jesuit Father John Gerard was carefully compiling a list of the outstanding English martyrs of the church with the idea that some or all of them might eventually be made saints. The wheels ground slowly, but British Catholics continued to work and hope for their martyrs. Last month the Sacred Congregation of Rites announced that it would consider waiving the rule that each candidate for sainthood must perform two miracles, and would admit 40 of the martyrs "as a group," provided that the group as a whole could produce two miracles.

Says Jesuit Father Philip Caraman. a vice-postulator of the martyrs' cause: "I have no doubt at all that the miracles will be worked. These martyrs were English and Welsh, after all, and it's a safe presumption that in heaven they have the interests of their fellow countrymen at heart." In an office in London's Farm Street, headquarters of the canonization cause, a brand-new folder labeled MIRACLES was placed hopefully in a metal filing cabinet.

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