It is rather like being asked to enclose a cheque to cover the expenses of the Downing Street Honours Unit in the same envelope as your recommendation of a local worthy for an MBE. The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in the United States, for instance, estimate that they spent more than pounds 250,000 on getting their founder, Katherine Drexel, beatified in 1988. The absurdity of such huge amounts of money being spent to mark the lives of men and women who often dedicated themselves to serving the poor has not been lost on many religious orders. They are, in increasing numbers, opting out of the system, treasuring and even unofficially sanctifying the memory of their founder, but forgoing the official stamp of approval. Even if you are prepared to cough up, however, not every cause that goes forward succeeds. For beatifications and canonisations under Pope John Paul II have evolved into a primarily political act. From when control of the process of saint-making was given exclusively to the popes in 1234 - previously it was done by the cheaper, more democratic but occasionally erratic means of popular acclaim - until 1978 and the advent of the Polish pope, there had been fewer than 300 successful candidates.

Yet in 1988 alone John Paul canonised 122 men and women and beatified many more. One reason for this is that the travelling shepherd who has been the first pope to exploit the potential of the jumbo jet needs to have a gift to take to his flock when he goes visiting. So one standard highlight of many of his trips has been the beatification or canonisation of a local man or woman. It shows both that the Vatican respects local traditions but that it is in control of the reins of power.The result is that John Paul II has, in effect, created an angelic House of Lords in his own image The figures chosen conform to a type. Most died centuries before and are generally pious, uncontroversial and apolitical. In choosing saints, John Paul has been acutely aware of their status as role models for Catholics. Hence the successful names must endorse - or certainly not contradict - his own traditionalist agenda.

Favoured then have been men like Josee Maria Escriva de Balaguer, founder of the conservative but highly influential organisation Opus Dei. His beatification in 1992 was condemned as a scandal by the retired head of the church in Spain and came close to bringing the whole system into disrepute.Padre Pio's is an instructive case. In his lifetime, he was treated with a good deal of suspicion by the then liberally minded church establishment headed by Pope Paul VI. Stigmata and what the old penny catechism used to deem as "signs and wonders" did not fit in with the Church's progressive, modern worldly emphasis in the 1960s and 1970s.