- Exactly how many saints are there?
- Simple answer: I don't know.
Longer answer: There are over 10,000 named saints and beati from history, the Roman Martyology and Orthodox sources, but I know of no definitive "head count".
- Why don't we know exactly? Isn't there a list?
- There are several lists. However, the exact number varies from one list to another. Some reasons:
- not all saints are part of the universal calendar, and their cultus was not always known to each of the list makers through the centuries
- due to lack of surviving documentation, we're still discovering martyrs from the early Church who were not previously known, or (more commonly) whose names have been combined, mispelled, etc. resulting in their being counted as several persons
- the 1969 revision of the General Calendar resulted in many of the saints being moved to local calendars, or those of specific orders; some folks were dropped entirely as better scholarship showed they were pious legend instead of flesh and blood
In addition we have the problem of not knowing the names of all the saints. Sometimes we know that a number of Christians were martyred for their faith, but we don't have their names, or we only have the names of the people considered their leaders. There are any number of reasons for this, but usuall the persecutors were illiterate, did not care who their victims were, or (in more modern times) were trying to cover up the incident.
Finally, there are unquestionably incidents of missionary monks, nuns, or lay people who were killed who-knows-where, and whose deaths were known only to themselves, their killers, and God.
