In a ceremony at St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Benedict XV declared Joan of Arc a saint, completing an extraordinary reversal: the peasant girl who led French armies against England had been condemned and burned at the stake by an ecclesiastical court in 1431. Her rehabilitation trial in 1456 had already cleared her name, but canonization elevated her to sainthood amid a surge of French nationalism following World War I.
Joan of Arc's journey from condemned heretic to canonized saint took 489 years and reflected as much about French politics as theology. Burned at Rouen in 1431 at about nineteen years old, she was retried posthumously in 1456 under Pope Callixtus III, who annulled the original verdict as tainted by English political pressure and corrupt proceedings.
Her cause for sainthood gained momentum in the nineteenth century as French Catholics and nationalists alike sought a unifying symbol, especially after the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War. World War I, in which French soldiers had fought under Joan's banner as a patriotic icon, accelerated the Vatican's decision.
Thousands gathered in Rome for the canonization, and the French government, officially secular since 1905, sent an official delegation despite tensions between church and state. Joan became one of France's patron saints, and her feast day, along with a national holiday established the following year, cemented her place as perhaps history's most famous teenage military commander turned martyr turned saint.
Key people: Joan of Arc, Pope Benedict XV