alt text: a manipulated image portraying the alleged killer/controversial folk hero re-envisioned as a saintly figure, wearing Christian religious garb with a sun-like halo shining behind his head
Source: someone said this image hit the front page on reddit before being “censored”.
Apparent credit: @gedogfx (IG). Title source: “Inkl”. 💩posting for meme archival and commentary purposes.
If he dies and confesses as you put it, and the situation gets bad enough he could be canonized a lot sooner. Saint Maximillian was beatified barely 30 years after his death and canonized 41 years after his death.
Saint Maximillian Kolbe was a Saint who died in the holocaust during ww2. His story is fucking incredible. The Nazis were gathering people and had a set number of people to take to the death camps… one guy was terrified and begged for mercy, and then Saint Max came in to step in his place. Since the SS officer involved was only concerned with the number of people and not who, he accepted and left the guy alone and took Maximillian in his place.
You basically have someone who willingly sacrificed his life for an absolute stranger he never met before… and you know what is even better? The guy who Maximillian saved not only survived ww2, but also lived to be over 90 years old AND he pointed out at the war’s end who was the officer who took all those people to their deaths. The officer was hanged for his crimes in 1946.
We need people who can make that kind of sacrifice. Luigi threw away a promising life to have a shot at the system. He isn’t much of a leftist, but that is just a small detail.
What an absolute badass - thanks for sharing
It’s important to keep in mind that much like how politics can slow sanctification (Joan of Arc probably would’ve been canonized before the 20th century if she hadn’t been executed by the catholic church in part for her faith) it can also speed it up. St. Kolbe is a great example, he was unambiguously heroic and noble, and he was rushed to sainthood because he was obviously headed there and the catholic church had not behaved heroically during the holocaust. Sanctifying Maximilian Kolbe was, alongside the change in doctrine to no longer blame the Jewish people for the death of Jesus, an attempt to reduce the odds that catholics would try that shit again as well as to clean their image up.
It’s not that sainthood can’t proceed rapidly. The issue is that Luigi’s case is fundamentally different than someone like Kobe. Luigi is a much more complex figure, more akin to a John Brown than Kobe. What Luigi did was heroic, but he still shot a man in the back. Absolution or not, his act was not the unambiguous act of noble sacrifice of Kobe. Kobe gave up his life, Luigi took one.
Under very particular circumstances, Luigi could get actual sainthood. But it would be so controversial that it would likely only happen after the lifetime of anyone currently alive. In the grand view of history, maybe history will find him worthy of actual official sainthood. But there’s zero chance the Catholic Church would endorse a murder like that while anyone alive now still lives.