A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

316 george ferzoco
The papal bull of canonization was decreed on May 10, 2012, at a
meeting of the Congregazione per le Cause dei Santi,26 but no canonization
Mass was held. This was a surprise, but it was tempered by the
announcement made soon afterward, on Pentecost Sunday (May 27, 2012),
that Hildegard, along with John of Avila, would be made a Doctor of the
Church. This would bring the total number of doctors to 35, and of these
Hildegard would become only the fourth woman (the other women being
Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, and Thérèse of Lisieux). The liturgical
rite of doctorization was held before a Mass that marked the opening
of the Eleventh Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for
the New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, on
Sunday, October 7, 2012. The apostolic letter essentially serves as a revised
canonization bull, summarizing Hildegard’s life and declaring her sanctity,
but most of all presenting and exalting the saint’s doctrine. The letter
ends by formally decreeing Hildegard to be a doctor:
Fulfijilling the wishes of numerous brethren in the episcopate, and of many
of the faithful throughout the world, after due consultation with the Congregation
for the Causes of Saints, with certain knowledge and after mature
deliberation, with the fullness of my apostolic authority I declare . . . Saint
Hildegard of Bingen, professed nun of the Order of Saint Benedict, to be
[Doctor] of the Universal Church. In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Thus came to a triumphant close the eight-centuries-long process to grant
Hildegard of Bingen the formal recognition of authoritative holiness. The
canonization and doctorization of Hildegard were not simply the acts of a
German Pope recognizing a German holy woman, but rather the culmination
of centuries of effforts in that direction.27
26 “De peracta Canonizatione aequipollente Hildegardis Bingensis,” Acta Apostolicae
Sedis 104, n. 11 (November 2012), pp. 863–67.
27 George Ferzoco, “Woman of vision,” The Tablet, October 13, 2012, pp. 12–13.