Do Saints Have to Be Perfect in the Church’s Eyes?

Brief Overview

• The Catholic Church does not require saints to have been perfect people during their lives on earth.
• Saints are recognized for their virtue, holiness, and commitment to following Christ, even though they struggled with sins and flaws like all humans do.
• The Church examines the lives of saints through a careful process that looks at both their strengths and their struggles.
• Perfection is not a standard for sainthood; rather, the Church seeks evidence of grace working through human weakness.
• Many recognized saints made serious mistakes, faced moral failures, and worked to overcome significant personal challenges throughout their lives.
• The goal of sainthood is to show how God’s grace can transform a person and lead them toward holiness, not to present an impossible or unrealistic standard for human behavior.

Understanding Holiness and Sanctity

Saints in the Catholic Church are people who have lived lives focused on loving God and serving others, but this does not mean they were without faults. The Church teaches that holiness comes from growing closer to God through grace and the sacraments, not from achieving a state where a person never sins or makes mistakes. When the Church recognizes someone as a saint, the process involves studying their life carefully to see how they responded to God’s call and how they grew in virtue over time. The life of a saint shows a pattern of turning toward God even when facing real human struggles, doubts, and failures. Saints are people who kept returning to God through prayer, repentance, and the use of the sacraments like confession and the Eucharist. Their holiness comes from their desire to serve God and their willingness to change and improve themselves throughout their lives. The Church recognizes that all humans are born with a tendency toward sin called concupiscence, which means that struggling with temptation is a normal part of human life. Saints faced these same struggles as anyone else in the world. The difference is that saints chose to respond to their failures by seeking God’s forgiveness and continuing to grow in virtue. Sanctity is not about being perfect but about being faithful to God’s grace and allowing that grace to change your heart and actions over time.

The Role of Grace in Saintly Lives

The Catholic faith teaches that grace is God’s free gift of help that makes it possible for people to grow in holiness and do good works. Saints understood that they could not achieve holiness through their own effort alone but only through God’s grace working in their lives. This is why the Church studies not just what saints did but also how they relied on God’s help through prayer and the sacraments. Many saints experienced moments of doubt, fear, and spiritual struggle even after they had devoted their lives to serving God. Saint Teresa of Calcutta, for example, experienced periods of spiritual darkness where she felt far from God, yet she continued her work with the poor in India. Saint Augustine spent years living in sin before his conversion and spent the rest of his life working to overcome the habits of his past. The grace that changed these saints did not erase their past struggles or make them incapable of further temptation. Instead, grace gave them the strength to choose good over evil and to keep moving forward in their relationship with God. The Church recognizes that saints are examples of how God’s grace works through human weakness to produce real transformation and growth. A saint is someone who said yes to God’s grace, even when it was hard, and who kept saying yes throughout their entire life. This is a much more realistic and helpful model for ordinary people than an image of perfection that seems unreachable. Saints show us that holiness is not for the special few but is available to anyone willing to accept God’s grace and work to grow in virtue.

Examining the Lives of Real Saints

When looking at the actual lives of people the Church has canonized as saints, one finds many examples of men and women who faced serious moral struggles and failures. Saint Peter was afraid and denied even knowing Jesus three times before the crucifixion, yet Jesus chose him to lead the Church. Saint Paul had been part of persecuting Christians before his conversion to Christ on the road to Damascus. Saint Jerome struggled with anger and harsh speech throughout his life, and he wrote about his own battles with temptation and pride. Saint Francis of Assisi came from a wealthy family and spent his early years pursuing a lifestyle focused on pleasure and status before he turned his life around completely. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, despite her young age at death and her reputation for holiness, wrote about her own temptations and struggles with faith. Saint Ignatius of Loyola was a soldier focused on honor and advancement before a battle injury led him to reflect on his life and change his path. Saint Thomas Aquinas worked hard to overcome his natural tendency toward anger and had to develop patience through conscious effort and prayer. These saints are not remembered as people who never sinned or struggled, but as people who responded to their weaknesses by seeking God’s help and continuing to grow. The Church honors them precisely because their lives show the power of God’s grace to transform human hearts, not because they were superhuman or without fault. Reading about the actual struggles and failures of recognized saints can be encouraging for ordinary people who also face temptation, sin, and the need for conversion and change throughout their lives.

The Process of Canonization and Virtue

The official process the Church uses to declare someone a saint is called canonization, and this process involves careful study of the person’s entire life. The Church looks for evidence that the person practiced virtue in an outstanding way and that they responded to God’s grace faithfully over many years. Virtue is a good habit that helps a person choose what is right and good, and saints are known for developing strong virtues like faith, hope, charity, courage, and wisdom. However, practicing virtue does not mean being perfect in every moment or never falling into sin. Virtue is something that grows over time through practice and through relying on God’s grace. A person might practice the virtue of honesty and still struggle with this virtue in certain situations where fear or pride tempts them to tell a lie. Saints worked to develop their virtues in the same way, through repeated choices and through prayer and the sacraments. The Church also examines the historical record to see if there are miracles connected to the person’s intercession, which means praying to that saint to ask for God’s help. Miracles are understood as signs that God has approved of recognizing this person as a saint and that prayers through the saint’s intercession have been heard. The canonization process also involves examining whether the person might have made mistakes or done things that were wrong, because the Church wants to make sure that recognizing someone as a saint will not lead people to follow a bad example. What the Church is really looking for is evidence that a person was faithful to God’s grace, grew in virtue through their life, and showed genuine holiness despite their human weaknesses and failures.

Understanding Christian Virtue and Human Weakness

Christian virtue involves developing good habits and character traits that help a person live according to God’s will and the teachings of Christ. The four cardinal virtues that all people are called to develop are prudence, which means making wise choices; justice, which means giving to others what they are due; fortitude, which means courage and strength in facing difficulties; and temperance, which means moderation and control over desires. Beyond these four cardinal virtues, Christians are also called to develop the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which are gifts from God that direct a person toward God. Saints are known for their exceptional development of these virtues, but this does not happen overnight or without struggle. Saint Paul wrote about his own experience of struggling against his sinful nature even after becoming an apostle, saying that he did things he did not want to do and failed to do things he wanted to do. Human weakness is a part of the human condition because of original sin, and Jesus taught that all people are capable of sin and need God’s mercy and forgiveness. When Jesus asked his disciples if they wanted to leave him, Peter said that Jesus had the words of eternal life and that they believed in him, yet Peter still denied knowing Jesus a few days later. This shows that even people who had spent time with Jesus and had come to believe in him still struggled and failed. What distinguished the saints from others was not the absence of these struggles but their response to them, which was always to return to God through repentance and prayer. Saints developed virtue not by being free from temptation or struggle but by choosing good over evil repeatedly and by accepting God’s help when they fell into sin. This is why the Church can honor saints as models of holiness without presenting them as impossible ideals that ordinary people can never reach.

The Testimony of Scripture and Church Teaching

The Catholic Church’s understanding that saints do not need to be perfect comes from the teachings of the Bible and from the tradition of the Church over centuries. Jesus taught his followers that they should not judge others or claim to be without sin themselves, saying in the Gospel of Matthew that those without sin should cast the first stone at someone who has sinned. Jesus also taught his disciples to forgive one another not just once but seventy times seven times, which means without limit, because all people struggle with sin. The Letter of James says that we all stumble in many ways and that if we claim to be without sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. Saint John writes in his first letter that if we claim to have no sin we make God a liar and his word is not in us, but if we confess our sins God will forgive us. Saint Paul wrote that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and that no one is righteous, not even one. Yet Paul also taught that God’s grace is sufficient for all people and that God can work through human weakness to accomplish his purposes. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that saints are members of the Church who have lived lives of heroic virtue and who now live in heaven with God, but this does not mean they were without sin during their earthly lives. The Church has always recognized that the path to holiness involves struggle, failure, repentance, and growth. Sanctity is not a destination that a person reaches and then remains at forever, but rather a continuous process of turning toward God and allowing God’s grace to transform the heart throughout a person’s entire life.

Saint Augustine and His Past Struggles

One of the most significant examples of a saint who was not perfect comes from the life of Saint Augustine, one of the most important teachers in the early Church. Augustine spent much of his young adult life pursuing pleasure, living with a woman outside of marriage, and following beliefs that later proved to be false. He did not come to faith in Christ until he was in his thirties, and even after his conversion he wrote honestly about the sins he committed and the temptations he continued to face. Augustine’s writings show that he struggled with pride, with anger, and with the desires of the body even after he became a bishop and was recognized as a learned teacher in the Church. He did not hide these struggles from others but wrote about them openly so that people could understand that holiness is not about perfection but about turning toward God. Augustine’s life demonstrates that the Church honors people who spent years living in ways contrary to God’s will and who then changed their lives completely and devoted themselves to serving God. The path that took Augustine from a life focused on pleasure and false beliefs to a life of learning, prayer, and service to God shows the real power of God’s grace to transform a human heart. Augustine’s honesty about his own continued struggles with temptation and sin after his conversion makes him a model that real people can look to without feeling discouraged or ashamed of their own failures. His example shows that being a saint does not mean erasing the past or becoming someone who never faces temptation, but rather becoming someone who responds to God’s call for conversion and then remains faithful to that conversion even when it is difficult.

Saint Jerome’s Struggles with Anger and Harshness

Another important example of a saint who struggled significantly with a particular weakness is Saint Jerome, one of the four great doctors of the Church who made a major translation of the Bible into Latin. Jerome had a sharp tongue and was known for speaking harshly to others, particularly to people he believed were teaching false things about the faith. He wrote letters that were extremely critical of other scholars and theologians, and he was capable of using cutting and insulting language in his arguments. Jerome himself wrote about his struggles with anger and recognized that this was a vice that he needed to work against throughout his life. He did not claim to have overcome this weakness completely, but rather he showed how a person could work toward developing the virtue of gentleness and kindness while still fighting against a strong natural tendency toward harshness. The Church recognized Jerome as a saint not because he became perfect and stopped struggling with anger, but because he used his gifts and abilities in service to the Church and because he worked consciously to improve himself spiritually. Jerome’s life shows that the Church does not require that a person overcome all of their character flaws before they can be recognized as a saint. Instead, the Church looks for evidence that a person was aware of their weaknesses, that they worked to improve through prayer and effort, and that they made a significant contribution to serving God and the Church despite their ongoing struggles. Jerome’s example is also helpful because it shows that even very important and respected figures in the Church, people whose work has helped millions of people learn about the faith, can still be people who struggle with the same kinds of temptations and weaknesses that ordinary people face.

The Importance of Repentance and Confession

The Catholic faith emphasizes that all people are called to the sacrament of reconciliation, also known as confession, where they can confess their sins to a priest and receive God’s forgiveness. This is not just for ordinary people but was practiced by saints throughout their lives as well. When the Church examines the life of a potential saint, the question is not whether that person sinned, because all humans sin, but rather whether that person was committed to repentance and to using the means of grace that the Church provides. Saints are remembered as people who took their sins seriously and who regularly sought God’s forgiveness through the sacrament of reconciliation. Saint Francis of Assisi, despite being known for his great holiness and his devotion to God, regularly confessed his sins and worked on improving himself spiritually throughout his life. The process of repentance involves not just feeling sorry for one’s sins but also making a commitment to change one’s behavior and to avoid sin in the future. Saints understood that this commitment to change was not something that happened once but something that needed to happen repeatedly as they faced new temptations and discovered new areas where they needed to grow. The sacrament of reconciliation is available to all people, and the Church teaches that this sacrament is one of the most important sources of grace that helps people grow in holiness. When the Church looks at a saint’s life, the evidence that the person regularly confessed their sins and sought to grow through this sacrament is actually a sign of authentic holiness, not a sign of failure or weakness. This is because a saint is someone who understood that all people need God’s mercy and who was willing to acknowledge their sins and work toward genuine conversion and change.

Saints and the Battle Against Temptation

The Catholic understanding of sainthood includes the recognition that saints faced temptation just as all people do, and that part of their holiness came from how they responded to temptation. The Letter of James teaches that God does not tempt anyone to do evil, but that temptation comes from our own desires, and then when desire is conceived it gives birth to sin. Saints understood this teaching and they knew that being tempted was not the same as giving in to temptation or committing sin. A saint could face temptation and choose not to give in to it, and this choosing not to give in was one of the ways that saints grew in virtue. Saint Anthony, who is famous in the history of the Church for his dedication to prayer and fasting in the desert, wrote about experiencing terrible temptations and attacks from the devil throughout his life of prayer. Rather than being seen as a failure or a sign that Anthony was not truly holy, his accounts of temptation are understood as evidence that he was serious about serving God and that the devil was trying to turn him away from his commitment to God. The more seriously a person takes their commitment to serve God, the more they might expect to face temptation, because the forces opposed to God will work harder to pull them away from their path. Saints did not always overcome temptation successfully in every moment, but they developed patterns of choosing good and relying on God’s grace when they faced difficulty. The spiritual lives of saints show a realistic picture of what it means to work toward holiness, which includes both successes and failures, both moments of strength and moments of weakness, and a continual return to God through prayer and the sacraments.

Understanding Holiness as Growth Rather Than Achievement

One important way to understand why the Church does not require perfection for sainthood is to recognize that holiness is better understood as a process of growth rather than as a final achievement or state that a person reaches and then maintains forever. When the Church teaches that all people are called to holiness, it is not saying that all people are called to become perfect but rather that all people are called to grow closer to God throughout their lives. This growth happens through the Holy Spirit working in a person’s heart, through the sacraments, through prayer, through studying the teachings of the Church, and through trying to live according to the commandments and the example of Christ. Growth as a Christian is not a straight line upward, but rather it often involves cycles of growth and struggle, of progress and setback, of greater understanding followed by times of doubt and questioning. Saints experienced this same pattern of growth in their spiritual lives as anyone else who is serious about their faith. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who is one of the youngest people to be declared a saint by the Church, wrote about her spiritual experiences and showed that even someone who seemed to grow up surrounded by faith and devoted to God from childhood still experienced doubt, fear, and internal struggle. The growth of a saint happened not because they were free from all of these difficulties but because they kept working through them with faith and prayer. By recognizing that holiness is a process of growth rather than a final achievement, the Church makes it clear that sainthood is not about reaching a state of perfection that separates a saint from ordinary people but rather about being faithful to the work of growing in love for God and others throughout one’s entire life.

The Role of Human Weakness in God’s Plan

The Bible teaches that God is strong and powerful and that God’s power is made perfect in weakness, which means that God can work through human limitation and failure to accomplish God’s purposes. Saint Paul wrote about his own weakness and how God told him that God’s grace was sufficient for him, that God’s power was made perfect in his weakness. This theological truth is important for understanding sainthood because it means that a saint can be someone through whom God works powerfully even if that saint is aware of their own limitations and failures. Many saints spoke about having periods where they felt weak in faith or struggled to believe, yet it was precisely in these periods of weakness that they experienced God’s grace in a powerful way. The Desert Fathers, who were monks who went to the deserts of Egypt and Syria to devote themselves to prayer, spoke of experiencing both periods of great spiritual comfort and periods of spiritual barrenness and difficulty. Rather than seeing these periods of difficulty as signs that they were not truly holy, they understood them as part of their spiritual journey and as opportunities to trust in God even when they could not feel God’s presence. A saint is not necessarily someone who always feels confident in their faith or who always has a sense of God’s presence, but rather someone who continues to believe and to serve God even when faith is difficult and when God’s presence seems far away. This means that a saint can be someone who struggled with doubts, with fear, with physical and mental illness, and with all of the human difficulties that anyone might face. What made these people saints was not that they were exempt from such difficulties but that they faced these difficulties while continuing to trust in God and to work at growing in faith, hope, and love.

The Danger of a False Image of Perfection

If the Church were to present saints only as perfectly holy people who never struggled or failed, this would actually create a false and harmful image of what holiness is. Such an image would discourage ordinary people who know from their own experience that they struggle with temptation, that they sometimes fail to do what they know is right, and that they face doubts and difficult emotions. If holiness required perfection, then holiness would be impossible for anyone, and people would be tempted to give up trying to serve God at all. The Church teaches that all people are called to holiness and that this is not meant to be an impossible burden but rather a call to grow closer to God through the grace that God provides. If the image of sainthood were that of a perfect person who never sinned or struggled, this would be a contradictory message that would say all are called to holiness but actually only people who are perfect can achieve it. Instead, by being honest about the real struggles that saints faced while also acknowledging their great virtue and their faithfulness to God, the Church provides a realistic and encouraging image of what holiness looks like in practice. Saints become models not because they were superhuman or exempt from the human condition but because they show how ordinary people, with the same weaknesses and struggles as anyone else, can respond to God’s grace and can grow toward holiness over the course of a lifetime. This is why the lives of saints are so important in the life of the Church; they show that the path to holiness is not just for the specially gifted or the naturally good-hearted but is available to anyone who wants to turn toward God and work at growing in love for God and others.

Examining the Canonization Process More Closely

The process by which the Catholic Church declares someone a saint involves many steps and much careful research and examination of that person’s life. In the early Church, people were recognized as saints simply by popular acclaim if they had died as martyrs for their faith or if they had lived a notably holy life that was well known in their community. Over time, the Church developed a more formal process to make sure that the people being honored as saints were truly worthy of that honor and that their lives could serve as good examples for others. Today, the canonization process involves investigation by Church officials who examine the person’s writings, interview people who knew the person, and study the historical record to determine if the person lived a life of heroic virtue. The word heroic might seem to suggest perfection, but heroic virtue really means practicing virtue in an exceptional and outstanding way, even in the face of great difficulty and opposition. A person who gives up wealth and comfort to serve the poor is practicing heroic virtue not because they become perfect but because they are making an extraordinary sacrifice and commitment. A person who faces persecution and torture rather than renounce their faith is practicing heroic virtue not because they are invulnerable to fear but because they choose faithfulness to God despite intense fear and suffering. The Church also looks for evidence of miracles in the canonization process, which are understood as signs that God has approved of recognizing this person as a saint. It is important to note that the existence of miracles does not suggest that the person was perfect but rather that God confirms the person’s holiness and shows that prayers through this person’s intercession are being heard. When all of this evidence is examined carefully, the Church declares someone to be a saint if the evidence shows that the person lived a life of heroic virtue and grew in holiness despite their human weaknesses.

The Example of Saint Francis of Assisi

Saint Francis of Assisi provides another important example of someone the Church has declared a saint even though his early life and his ongoing struggles show that he was far from perfect. Francis was born into a wealthy family and spent his early years pursuing a life of pleasure, wealth, and status like other young men from his social class. He was interested in military service and in the pursuits that would make him well-known and admired among his peers. It took a serious illness and a series of experiences that made him question his values before Francis began to change his life and to seek a deeper relationship with God. After his conversion, Francis devoted himself to serving the poor and to living a life of radical simplicity and dependence on God. Yet Francis’s life after his conversion was not free from struggle or difficulty; he dealt with physical illness throughout his life, he had conflicts with other members of his religious community, and he faced times of doubt and spiritual darkness. Francis did not become a saint by becoming perfect but by turning his entire life toward serving God and the poor, and by continuing to do this despite the many challenges he faced. His example shows that the Church honors a dramatic conversion from a life focused on worldly values to a life focused on serving God, even if that person continues to face struggles and has to work continually at maintaining their commitment to this new direction. The story of Francis’s life is more encouraging to ordinary people than the story of someone who was always perfect would be, because it shows that a person can make a real change in the direction of their life even if that person had spent years heading in a different direction, and that this kind of change is a sign of genuine holiness.

How Saints Model Real Holiness for Today

When the Church holds up saints as models of holiness, the Church is inviting people to learn from the ways that these men and women responded to God’s call and grew in faith, hope, and love despite facing real human challenges. The details of a saint’s life matter because they show concrete ways that a person with a particular personality, with particular weaknesses, and facing particular challenges managed to work toward holiness. If saints were presented only as abstract ideas of perfection, they would not be helpful models at all because people could always say that this idea of perfection is not like me and therefore not relevant to my life. By being honest about the fact that saints struggled with temptation, with self-doubt, with anger or fear or other vices, the Church makes saints into models that real people can actually follow. A person who struggles with anger can look at Saint Jerome and see that even a great teacher in the Church struggled with this same vice and that this struggle did not prevent him from serving God and making an important contribution to the Church. A person who has lived in a way contrary to God’s will can look at Saint Augustine and see that it is never too late to change and that God’s grace can transform a heart even if years have been spent pursuing empty things. A person who struggles with physical illness or with interior darkness can look at Saint Thérèse of Lisieux or Saint Anthony and see that these experiences do not separate a person from holiness but can actually be part of the spiritual path. The saints become real models of holiness when we understand them as people who faced the same kinds of struggles that we face but who responded to these struggles with faith and prayer and with a commitment to keep working toward a closer relationship with God.

The Teaching of the Catechism on Holiness and Saints

The Catechism of the Catholic Church provides official Church teaching on the nature of holiness and on what makes a saint. The Catechism teaches that the Church is holy because it is united to Christ, who is holy, and that all members of the Church are called to grow in holiness through the grace that Christ offers (CCC 824-825). The Catechism also teaches that holiness is not reserved for certain people but that all people in every state of life are called to holiness and that this is God’s will for all people (CCC 2013). When the Catechism discusses the communion of saints, which is the union between the faithful on earth and the saints in heaven, it presents the saints as men and women who have lived lives of genuine virtue and who are now in heaven with God (CCC 954-959). The Catechism describes canonization as the act by which the Church solemnly declares that a person is in heaven and can be honored as a saint by the faithful (CCC 828). This teaching shows that the Church recognizes saints as people who have now reached the goal of holiness by being united with God in heaven, but it does not require that these people were perfect during their earthly lives. Rather, the Catechism emphasizes throughout its teaching on the virtues and on Christian living that all people struggle with sin and that all people need God’s mercy and forgiveness. The path to holiness that the Catechism describes is one of growth, of returning to God through repentance, of using the sacraments, and of working gradually to develop the virtues that lead a person closer to God. This is the path that the saints walked, and this is the path that all people are invited to walk, which means that the lives of saints should encourage all people to continue working toward holiness even when they face failure and struggle.

Conclusion: Saints as Witnesses to God’s Grace

The Church does not require that saints be perfect people because perfection is not actually what holiness is about. Rather, holiness is about loving God and loving others, about growing in virtue through God’s grace, and about responding to God’s call even when this is difficult and when one continues to struggle with human weakness. The saints are witnesses to the power of God’s grace to transform human hearts and to work through human limitation and failure. When the Church honors a saint, the Church is saying that this person truly loved God, that this person worked seriously at growing in faith, hope, and love, and that this person’s life can teach us something important about what it means to respond to God’s call. The examples of saints show us that holiness is possible for people who have made serious mistakes, who have struggled with particular vices or weaknesses, and who have faced times of doubt or spiritual struggle. The message of sainthood is not that a few special people are perfect and the rest of us can never be holy, but rather that all people are called to holiness and that this call is available to anyone who accepts God’s grace and works at growing toward God throughout their life. The Church invites all of the faithful to grow in holiness, which means that all people are called to work at developing virtue, at serving God and others faithfully, and at responding to God’s grace through prayer and the sacraments. The lives of saints show us what this kind of faithful response to God’s grace looks like in practice, and they encourage us to keep working toward holiness even when we fail and have to start over again.