PAUL VALLELY writing in the New York Times questions the politics behind the process of "saint making".

With the forthcoming canonisations of two Popes, John XXIII and John Paul II, is it time to look again at the purpose saints are meant to serve. Is the whole process of 'canonisation' in need of radical overhaul?

In rejecting a version of Catholicism that diminished human freedom, led to outrageous scandal and that in retrospect is now seen to have diminished people and Church, Irish society seems intent on categorising religion and spirituality as unacceptable, irrelevant, even dangerous in a civilised society.

Lives changed, by encountering him