Economics of Sainthood (a preliminary investigation)* Robert J. Barro, Harvard University Rachel M. McCleary, Harvard University Alexander McQuoid, Columbia University February 2010

1. Introduction Saint-making has been a major activity of the Catholic Church for centuries. The pace of sanctifications has picked up noticeably in the last several decades under the last two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Our goal is to apply social-science reasoning to understand the Church’s choices on numbers and characteristics of saints, gauged by location and socioeconomic attributes of the persons designated as blessed. To carry out this research, we began by collecting long-term data on numbers and characteristics of blessed persons selected by the Catholic Church.1 The data apply to canonizations (approval as a saint) and beatifications (final stage of qualification for canonization).2 Our data set includes all officially recognized beatifications and canonizations by the Catholic Church since 1588, when official Vatican records began. Our list was drawn from Index ac Status Causarum (1999) for the years starting in 1588 and ending in 1998.3 For

*We appreciate comments from Marios Angeletos, Davide Cantoni, Ed Glaeser, Emily Oster, Thomas Reese, and Jose Ursua. 1 The data and details of construction will eventually be available at: www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/barro; http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rmcclea/data.html; http://www.columbia.edu/~afm2106/research.htm. 2 Pierre Delooz (1969) has four categories: (1) All those individuals who received papal canonization either before Pope Urban VIII’s decrees or in an equivalent canonization after the decrees; (2) individuals who were canonized locally by a bishop, popular will, or monastic tradition; (3) those whose canonizations were prepared by the Congregation of Rites; (4) individuals who have been officially beatified and canonized. 3 The Index ac Status Causarum is published by the Catholic Church’s