Polish Catholics urge sainthood for EU founding father

It's enough to make a Eurosceptic blanch, but Robert Schuman, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, may be heading for sainthood.

St Schuman is not a certainty: a group of Polish Catholics have launched an investigation into whether the Luxembourg-born politician is a suitable candidate before the Vatican - which is already under fire for beatifying people too readily - can take up the case.

His sponsors say that Schuman's claim to heavenly fame is that he was France's foreign minister in 1950, when he put forward a revolutionary plan for pooling French and German steel production - to prevent the two countries from ever going to war again.

What became the European Coal and Steel Community, run by a supranational authority, was the embryo of today's EU. It was an undreamed-of success, though certainly not the miracle normally required to qualify for canonisation.

Schuman was born in 1886 and died in 1963. His memory is already celebrated across the continent on Europe Day, May 9, the anniversary of the announcement of his plan.

But the move takes admiration for the European project to unprecedented levels.

Poland, the largest of the 10 countries joining the EU next year, badly wanted to see a reference to God in the union's new constitution. Creating St Schuman may be seen as an acceptable substitute.

Schuman's gift was to see that Europe would be built not by a vision but by "concrete achievements which create a de facto solidarity".

Britain, however, was not impressed, and stayed out of the project when it was launched in 1952.

"We will not hand over to any supranational authority the right to close down our mines and our steelworks," said the Conservative MP and future prime minister Harold Macmillan. "No government could do it, no party could stand for it."

The investigation into Schuman's candidacy could be completed this year, says the Polish Catholic news agency KAI.

Another European "founding father" being considered for sainthood is the former Italian prime minister Alcide de Gasperi, Schuman's contemporary and a devout Catholic.

The Pope has been accused of devaluing sainthood by canonising more people than all his 20th-century predecessors put together and - as in the controversial case of Mother Teresa - using a "fast track" to complete the process.