The Devils Advocate -

Prospero Fani died in 1608, obscure and un-sainted. No one argued for his cause. But in the archives of the Vatican, his dusty legal briefs remain a monument to a strange and necessary truth: sometimes, the most faithful thing you can do is say no.

Then came the miracles. A nun in Florence claimed the friar had appeared to her in a dream and cured her blindness. Prospero cross-examined the nun’s confessor, the attending physician, and three witnesses who had seen her bump into furniture the day before the alleged cure. He discovered the physician had been away on the day in question. The witnesses contradicted each other about the nun’s behavior. Prospero submitted a 40-page brief arguing that the miracle was “not proven beyond natural explanation.” The Devils Advocate

Over the centuries, the Devil’s Advocate became legendary. He was the man who argued for hell’s corner in heaven’s courtroom. His briefs grew into multi-thousand-page volumes. He had the power to delay a canonization for decades, even centuries. And because of him, between 1587 and 1983, when Pope John Paul II dramatically reformed the process, the Church declared fewer than 300 saints—a tiny fraction of those proposed. Prospero Fani died in 1608, obscure and un-sainted

In the year 1587, inside the Vatican’s Palace of the Congregations, a weary canon lawyer named Prospero Fani received an assignment he did not want. He was to become the Promotor Fidei —the Promoter of the Faith. Everyone else called it by its bitter nickname: the Devil’s Advocate. Then came the miracles