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| Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen. Rupertsberg MS, fol. 1r. |
Update: On May 10, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI formalized Hildegard of Bingen's saintly status in a process known as equivalent canonization, by which the Pontiff authorized the universal church to observe the veneration of a holy person (“Servant of God”) according to the rites of full canonization by inscription in the universal calendar of saints. Hildegard’s veneration within the dioceses of Germany was approved by what is now the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in 1940, although her name appeared in the Roman Martyrologium beginning in the sixteenth century, and indulgences for local veneration in the Rhineland can be found throughout the later Middle Ages. Her feast day is September 17 (the date of her death in 1179). On May 27, in his Regina Caeli address for the Solemnity of Pentecost, Benedict announced that on October 7, 2012, Hildegard and St. John of Avila will join the thirty-three other Doctors of the Church, thirty men and three women.