“Not Built as a Shrine, but as a Sacred Space”: The Devotional Nature of Museums Dedicated to Candidates for Sainthood

Abstract

While museums have long been referred to as “secular shrines,” resembling the devotional attitude given to religious figures, with the rise in museums dedicated to candidates for sainthood, we are seeing how religious institutions are starting to use the museum model to create religious shrines as well. These are private institutions, separated from the Church proper, in order to avoid any charge of creating a public cult for the saint-to-be (and so endangering the cause for canonization), and instead creating a shared space for private devotions. Given the history of museum practice, which has often overlapped with devotional models, the museum becomes a natural means to create this shared, private space for people to venerate the candidate for sainthood, while also petitioning for their later canonization.