Pope who signed the 1979 AD request names St. Hildegard a Doctor

VATICAN CITY, October 7, 2012 AD — Pope Benedict XVI today declared Saint Hildegard of Bingen, the twelfth-century German Benedictine abbess, a Doctor of the Universal Church, at the Mass in St. Peter’s Square that opened the Synod of Bishops. He gave the same title to Saint John of Avila, a priest of the sixteenth century. The request he granted had reached Rome from the German bishops on March 6, 1979 AD, and among the bishops who made it was the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich and Freising, the man who granted it today as Pope.

A Doctor of the Church is a writer whose teaching has been of great benefit to the whole Church. The title asks three things: eminent learning, a high degree of holiness, and a proclamation by the Pope or by a general council. The German bishops wanted that proclamation for St. Hildegard, who died at the Rupertsberg, her convent near Bingen, in 1179 AD. Rome would not take up the bishops’ request, because she had never been formally canonized.

The case for her canonization had been opened under Pope Gregory IX in the late 1220s AD. In December 1233 AD a priest of Strasbourg carried the sealed record of the inquiry from the Rupertsberg to Rome. Rome rejected it, because the miracles in it were set down without the exact dates, places and names of witnesses and of the people healed that the procedure required. Popes ordered fresh inquiries more than once over the next century, and none was concluded. She was honoured as a saint all the same. A grant of indulgences from Pope John XXII to her convent spoke of “the Feast Day of Saint Hildegard”, and the Roman Martyrology entered her name under September 17.

In 1979 AD Cardinal Joseph Höffner of Cologne, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, presented the conference’s request to Pope John Paul II. Cardinal Höffner rested it on three grounds. The first was the soundness of her teaching. Blessed Pope Eugene III had recognized it in 1147 AD, when he authorized St. Hildegard to write and to speak in public. The second was her holiness, which ordinary people had long known and honoured, and the third the authority of her writings. The same year, the eight-hundredth anniversary of her death, St. John Paul II called her a “light for her people and her time”. In the Apostolic Letter issued today, Pope Benedict XVI recalled that the cardinals, archbishops and bishops of the conference had joined Cardinal Höffner, “including myself as Cardinal Archbishop of Munich and Freising”.

In 1987 AD the German bishops asked Rome again, this time for the canonization as well as the title. The next year the German Bishops’ Conference said that critical editions of all her works, scholarly texts of everything she wrote, would have to be published before any procedure began. The last of those editions was finished in 2010 AD.

On September 1 and 8 of that year, Pope Benedict XVI gave two talks on St. Hildegard at his general audiences. The Benedictine nuns of the Abbey of St. Hildegard at Eibingen wrote to thank the Pope. They asked him to canonize St. Hildegard and to name her a Doctor. Pope Benedict XVI told the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to take the case up again.

He also ordered that the old canonization case be finished quickly. He waived two requirements: the miracle a canonization normally needs, and a review of her teaching by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In today’s letter Pope Benedict XVI explained why he set the usual procedure aside: “Since this concerned a famous teacher of theology who had been the subject of many authoritative studies, I granted the dispensation”.

On March 20 of this year the cardinals and bishops of the Congregation approved her cause, and the vote was unanimous. Pope Benedict XVI then signed the decree of canonization that closed the case. On Pentecost Sunday, May 27, he told the pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square that he would make her a Doctor of the Church on October 7.

During this morning’s Mass Pope Benedict XVI formally approved the findings of her cause and granted what the German bishops and the nuns of Eibingen had asked. Then he pronounced the formula: “Fulfilling the wishes of numerous brethren in the episcopate … with the fullness of my apostolic authority I declare Saint John of Avila, diocesan priest, and Saint Hildegard of Bingen, professed nun of the Order of Saint Benedict, to be Doctors of the Universal Church.”

In his homily Pope Benedict XVI said of her: “Hildegard nurtured an evident love of creation, and was learned in medicine, poetry and music. Above all, she maintained a great and faithful love for Christ and his Church.” In the Apostolic Letter Pope Benedict XVI wrote that “her authority reaches far beyond the confines of a single epoch or society; despite the distance of time and culture, her thought has proven to be of lasting relevance.” He concluded that giving her the title “has great significance for today’s world and an extraordinary importance for women.”