Saints should always be judged guilty until proven innocent," George Orwell said. Lately, the Vatican seems to share Orwell's skepticism.

Pope Benedict XVI has made no secret of his disdain for the high volume of saints named by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005. John Paul II conducted 482 canonizations, naming more saints in 26 years than his predecessors had canonized in the previous four centuries.

Padre Gaetano Catanoso was a priest in rural Calabria. His path to canonization, and its ripple effects, is told in "My Cousin, the Saint."

Since becoming pope, Benedict has stopped attending beatifications, the last step before canonization, and issued a call for "greater sobriety and rigor" in the process. This month, the pope appointed a new leader of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Archbishop Angelo Amato, who Vatican-watchers expect to throw more wrenches in the saint-making machinery.

So who need saints, anyway?

That's a question I take personally. A long lapsed Catholic, I was once ignorant of how and why the church names saints. But a few years ago, I learned of a blood relative, Padre Gaetano Catanoso, my grandfather's cousin, whom Pope John Paul II had put on a path to sainthood in 1980. Padre Gaetano was canonized in 2005.

A Catanoso saint? What kind of joke was this? Intrigued, I decided to look into this strange family phenomenon. I met with Vatican priests and interviewed relatives in the South of Italy for whom this distant cousin remains a powerful spiritual touchstone. In the process of learning about my relative, I learned plenty about why John Paul was so intent on making saints.

The canonization process, the pope believed, had become too bogged down in bureaucracy, too exacting, too detached from the people. So John Paul encouraged archbishops to suggest candidates for sainthood from around the world. He wanted local heroes in modern times, people whose real-life stories would uplift the faithful, inspire the skeptical and lure back the drifters.

In 1983, John Paul eliminated the office of the Devil's Advocate, which often held up causes for decades, if not centuries. He reduced the number of miracles needed for canonization from four to two. These changes expedited the process for many, including Padre Gaetano, a simple parish priest.

When my grandfather's cousin was ordained in 1903, southern Italy was like a Third World country. People were beyond poor. They were illiterate, jobless, steeped in suffering. Millions fled to America, like my grandfather.

But Padre Gaetano remained, running a desolate mountain parish in Calabria, then hiking to more remote villages to preach the Gospel. Later he founded an order of nuns and opened schools and orphanages crammed with the collateral damage of two world wars. He even stood up to the Mafia, showing a courage that put his life at risk.

Padre Gaetano had lived a modest life of heroic virtue, the definition of what it means to be a saint. This was precisely the kind of person Pope John Paul II wanted to recognize. Not just in Calabria, but wherever people were oppressed, wherever the church was under siege, wherever once-proud Catholics were in need of rejuvenation.

For nearly a century, Padre Gaetano has been a role model for countless Calabrians. Because he was named a saint, he has become one for me, as well. Without the saint-making machinery of the Vatican, I might never have heard of my extraordinary relative. Today, I may still be a mediocre Catholic, as a priest friend enjoys pointing out, but I am not quite so lapsed as I was before.

So as Archbishop Amato seeks to carry out the wishes of the new pope, he should not lose sight of John Paul's vision. It's not the number of saints that matters, but the message they carry to the people, a message that resonates in places where these saints served and beyond, places where hope and courage are always in demand.

Who needs saints? Maybe we all do.