(dpa) - The Vatican issued Monday a document tightening procedures for creating Roman Catholic saints, including instructing bishops to carefully scrutinize the "holiness" or "martyrdom" of candidates.
Published in a 86-page booklet form the document also set out rules on how alleged miracles performed by candidate saints must be examined.
This, the document said, was necessary because procedures in gathering and evaluating evidence on miracles had over the last 20 years become "problematic."
It also reiterated that a cause for sainthood cannot be presented sooner than five years after the death of a candidate.
The late Pope John Paul II made an exception to that rule in the case of Mother Teresa of Calcutta whose process towards sainthood began less than two years after she died in 1997.
Similarly, Benedict gave permission for the sainthood procedure for his predecessor John Paul to begin just over a month after the Polish pontiff's death in 2005.
Still, the Instruction for Conducting Diocesan or Eparchial Inquiries in the Causes of Saints, is believed to reflect Pope Benedict XVI's desire to give local bishops a greater role in selecting candidates for saints, but also urging them to be more careful in their choices.
During John Paul's pontificate some 1,340 people were beatified - the first step towards sainthood - while nearly 500 were canonized, a tally greater than all his predecessors combined since the current procedures on sainthood were introduced in 1588.