Group sainthood is a thing. For example, 2000 of the priests executed by anarchists during the Spanish civil war were proposed to sainthood, of which 233 were canonised in one event in 2001 by pope JP2. There were even some controversies about them being fascist shits but JP2 told the malcontents he don’t care and shut up (he also lied, he does care, he very much liked nazis).
There is also the Ten Thousand Martyrs, allegedly crucified on the orders of emperor Diocletian, but even church can’t agree if they even existed or it’s just a legend (of course in reality it’s just a legend that went viral as a meme in XIV and XV century).
Neat! I meant focusgroup as in they tested large groups of people to see the public would respond to the idea of a saint from the 00’s and who that should be. I’m imagining a cardinal in a room with nonas and a one-way mirror with the pope on the other side.
“Now-a what if-a we got a saint and he said as a little Bambino?”
The nonas murmur
“What if he was-a a little rascal?”
One of them takes off a shoe, ready to throw it
“What if he was-a a good boy, never did nothing wrong?”
…
“What if he helped his nona with logging on to Facebook to see what her children are doing?”
Standing ovation. The cardinal gives a thumbs-up to the mirror, the pope returns it, the cardinal doesn’t see it.
