This book is completely hilarious, mildly offensive and somewhat sacrilegious. However, it was a fun read that would appeal to those readers who were raised on stories of the saints. I laughed out loud while reading this book. The chapters include the canonization process and stories of the saints, as well as a checklist to guide readers along the path to sainthood.

I received this book from the publisher and from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.

In "How to Be a Saint," Kate Sidley presents a humorous take on the process of canonization within the Catholic Church. While the book is likely most enjoyable for Roman Catholics familiar with the church's quirks, Sidley's wit shines through as she critiques the often absurd hoops that individuals must jump through to be declared saints. The author infuses the narrative with engaging anecdotes, making it a comedic yet informative guide.
Sidley's background as a comedy writer for Stephen Colbert adds a unique flavor to the book, which contains interesting historical tidbits about saints, some of whom may be more legend than reality. Despite the humor, the book reveals the surprising costs and bureaucratic challenges involved in canonization, shedding light on the devotion many Catholics have toward saints.
I thought the book was funny. There are references to pop culture, much like you would find on tv. I also thought it was really informative in terms of the process of sainthood, some of the terminology like reliquary, asceticism, dogma, encyclical were defined and explained - so very Catholic terms to a possible non-Catholic audience. I"m a little bothered by the unclaimed miracles list in that parents should be able to breastfeed in public without weirdos making a big deal out of it. I'm on board with that idea - but the fact that the word "mothes" has been reduced to "parent" does not sit right with me. I also am bothered by the use of the secular CE and BCE. If she is writing about Catholic history, why not use BC and AD? I like the list of cities that have been listed by the author and some of the history of why they were named after saints. It is a really well researched book, with an extensive bibliography.
Overall, "How to Be a Saint" is characterized as a light-hearted exploration of saint-making, suitable for those looking to learn about saints in an entertaining way. While it may not satisfy those seeking a serious theological treatise, it offers a fun perspective on a complex subject, making it a recommended read for Catholics and curious non-Catholics alike.

Lighthearted book about Catholicism, mostly for Catholics but I suppose of interest to other folks generally interested in Catholic history. It's written by a comedian and Catholic, so there's a fair bit of in jokes. I'd say this is something like a coffee table book, designed primarily to spark discussion. It would also be a fun gag gift

*How to Be a Saint* by Kate Sidley is a quirky, charming read that mixes humor with a bit of introspection. The story follows an ordinary woman on an extraordinary quest to become a "saint" in her own life, and it’s a fun journey from start to finish. Sidley’s writing is light and easy to read, with just the right balance of wit and wisdom. Some parts felt a little predictable, but the book’s uplifting message and lovable characters kept me hooked. If you’re in the mood for something heartwarming and a little offbeat, *How to Be a Saint* is definitely worth a read!

A very fun introduction to the saints! As a Catholic who works at a Catholic school library, the saints are the hottest topic around. The variety and explanations of all the saints were funny and evocative.

This is an interesting look at saints and the process of canonization in the Catholic Church. It is definitely “mildly sacrilegious” (as the subtitle indicates)—I found the humor well-placed for the most part, although in a few places I’d suggest that Sidley went a little too far. It is a good attempt to explain how people become saints, for laypeople and those who are not scholars of religious history. There are a few factual errors, for example, it is possible for a priest who is not a bishop to become a cardinal, although it is uncommon. But, for a broad audience it is a well-written perspective on saint-making, which is a complicated and lengthy process in most cases, told with humor. The stories of saints will inform and educate, and I especially enjoyed the chapters near the end examining cities, food, and holidays connected to saints. Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC and the opportunity to provide an honest review.

A fun, lighthearted, and dare I say, interesting look at canonization. I definitely learned more about the process than my Catholic school and time in Catholic church taught me, so really, any time I have fun and learn something, I consider it a non-fic win.

How To Be A Saint is a true handbook for becoming a saint, albeit the most tongue in cheek handbook for sure! I liked the style of this book - I know a good amount about Catholicism, but the way the author outlined the ways to become a Saint in a very light hearted, was a fun way to introduce people to this topic. An easy read, although maybe not for people who take Catholicism too seriously!

It probably isn't a requirement that one be Roman Catholic to enjoy this book but I think it helps. That is, if you're not too sensitive about the institution of the church and some of it's odder rules.

Personally, I found this book hilarious. And the things the author (Kate Sidley) pokes fun at have nothing to do with faith but more the hoops one has to jump through to become a saint.

There's a lot of interesting information in this book but that wouldn't be my most important reason to read it.

My reason is that it's hilarious. This is a how-to guide on, as the title lays out, to become a saint and every page had something--or things--that made me laugh.

Although less amusing and a big surprise to me is how expensive the process of canonization is. I'm thinking of saints very differently now (those that are real--Sidley tells of many saints who though legendary probably--or definitely--did not exist outside the imagination.

There is a handy checklist after each part of the process that is worth holding on to, if that is a goal of the reader.

I went around telling people they must read this book, something I rarely do. But I need some people to share quotes. This is a book that longs to be shared with others.

Sidley is a writer for Stephen Colbert--another Catholic with a biting sense of humor that still manages--for me--to include a strong Catholic faith with a willingness to look at and critique, however amusingly, the foibles of the institution that carries.

This book immediately became one of my favorite--not just this year but of all the books I've read and I'm sure I will be rereading it.

A suitable Christmas gift?

How to Be a Saint: An Extremely Weird and Mildly Sacrilegious History of The Catholic Church's Biggest Names by Kate Sidley will be published by Sourcebooks in 2025.

This is a highly informative book on how to become a saint with short bios of saints through history. Wonderfully snarky, fun to read, and packed full of other related trivia-- it's surprising a book this short can hold so much. This would be a fun gift or coffee table book.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

Fun, informative and fast paced. The author is a saint for effectively covering such a complicated topic in a single book.

Kate Sidley is a writer for "The Late Show" with Stephen Colbert, and Colbert, himself a fellow Catholic, wrote the intro to this book. While there is a lot of humor in this book, I was amazed at just how packed with information it is. Sidley really did her homework on the canonization process and explaining some of the basics of Catholicism. I'm a cradle Catholic and I learned quite a few things myself, while at the same time can vouch that she's right on the money with the facts. This is the sort of book I'd recommend for a Catholic, or someone who is curious about Catholicism, who also has a great sense of humor.
Thanks to @netgalley and @sourcebooks for the ARC. Book to be published August 19, 2025

Entertaining, informative, I love a book that's both funny and educational. I'm not Catholic but I recently moved to a very Catholic area, so this gave me a lot of context for some of the stuff I was seeing and hearing!

Kate Sidley's How to Be a Saint was absolutely wonderful to read. As someone who was raised Catholic, but has gotten away from religion in recent years, it was the perfect blend of informative and humorous. I liked the little quizzes and activities that were scattered throughout the book. Saints have always fascinated me, so I felt that I was bit of the perfect target audience for this book. I read it over the course of two days and it legitimately made me laugh out loud, which is rare for a book. I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in saints or religion, but doesn't take it all too seriously.

Kate Sidley is an Emmy-nominated comedy writer, a young mother, and a sassy cynic who was raised Catholic. She writes for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, who wrote the foreword to her book, declaring “How to Be a Saint” hilarious. I love large doses of history served with humor. Of course I had to read it.

Thousands if not millions of readers will probably agree with Colbert that this book is amusing and delightful. Not me. Sidley doesn’t know when to let up as the sassy provocateur who yanks the curtain back to expose the wizard. I find her attempts at humor annoying, repetitive, and juvenile. Still, I sped through the lame jokes and focused on the good parts. Sidley does offer a lot of “good” stuff.

The bureaucracy, the exorbitant cost, and the years of effort it takes for the Church to declare someone a saint is not news. It’s ridiculous and embarrassing, and yet, countless Catholics cherish a devotion to the saints. Here’s where this book really missed the boat. We get some snarky bios on martyrs and saints, some of whom never even existed as real people but were mostly fictions. What we don’t get is the idea of a “communion of saints,” the whole community of faithful followers of Christ, living and dead, past, present, and future, beyond time and space. It’s my favorite aspect of the Apostle’s Creed. Yes, I'm sadly aware: the community of saints living on in heaven, yet accessible to us if we call upon them, may be nothing more than an exercise in positive thinking and wishful manifesting. Millions of Catholics know and love the saints, and call upon them, and just to BELIEVE that we are heard (and will be helped) seems effective, a surprising number of times. I’m not pushing devotion to saints here, but I am saying what a disappointment it is that this book so completely overlooks the reason we honor saints at all.

Sidley does manage to surprise us with things most readers wouldn’t know. Like, Limbo was abolished in 2007? I had to go online to see if she got that right. Kinda, sorta: The Church “abolished Limbo” in 2007 with a document called “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized,” published with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI. It did not totally abandon Limbo, as that Pope had said it should do. Catholics have never been “required” to believe in the theology of Limbo. This led me to a search on purgatory. Catholic Answers dot com tells us, “The teaching on purgatory is an article of faith that Catholics must believe. It is a truth that can never change.” This in turn led me to an old book I revisit from time to time, “The Christian Agnostic” by Leslie D. Weatherhead (1893-1976). He writes:

“This book would say to the modern layman, ‘Don’t exclude yourself from the fellowship of Christ’s followers because of mental difficulties. If you love Christ and are seeking to follow him, take an attitude of Christian agnosticism to intellectual problems at least for the present. Read this book to see if the essentials of the Christian religion are clarified for you and only accept those things which gradually seem to you to be true. Leave the rest in a mental box labeled, ‘awaiting further light.’ In the meantime, join with us in trying to show and to spread Christ’s spirit, for this, we feel, is the most important thing in the world.’”

Believe what your intellect allows you to believe, and put the rest in a box, “awaiting further light.” That may be as good as my faith ever gets. Let us spread light and love--in the name of Jesus, or just because we feel it is the right thing to do.

Sidley rips back the curtain on sainthood with a tone that is more than just “mildly” irreverent, but instead of tossing the book aside, I read every page, and admired the quantity of research and the great icons and artwork included in this book. The nonstop attempts to be funny almost ruin the entire book for me. Almost. The information, buried deep in bad jokes, is worthwhile information. I would have preferred some actually useful pointers on the path to sainthood, like, how did so many teenage nuns manage to build orphanages, hospitals, and schools, and how did they have the spunk to sass the Pope himself (St. Catherine as a teenager) and Billy the Kid (St. Blandine of the Old West). The answer is that they had CONVICTION. The question for me is how did they get it? Probably not by listening to people like Kate Sidley who point out the inconsistencies, bureaucratic bullsh*t, and evil machinations of the Church. Somehow, the saints believe God is good and God will empower them to do good for others. This is the most important angle to sainthood, in my opinion, and again, I wish Sidley had conveyed this mystical/magical mindset of saints.

In all, you can learn some stuff from this book, and you might find the unrelenting and distracting attempts at humor more amusing than I did. “How to Be a Saint” delivers some fascinating and disconcerting history, and for that, I can endorse the book.

This is a good book if you know about some of the Catholic Church but need a good laugh. I went into reading this not realizing it was going to be funny (and not in an awkward way in an ACTUAL funny way). This would be a good coffee table or side table book for guests or friends to look at. I already have a list of people I want to give this book to.

This is exactly as advertised. A extremely weird and mildly sacrilegious history of the catholic churches biggest names.
I learnt way more from this than I expected and have spoken about this book to a tonne of people now too.
It's funny, sarcastic, accessible and interesting.
If you've ever wondered how people become saints or just how bereaucratic the Catholic church is..this is the book for you.
At times it did feel like it was trying a little too hard to be funny but not so much that I couldn't still enjoy it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book

I read the description and was excited to read this book because it sounded like it would be filled with humor and a bit of an irreverent look at the process of canonization and the lives of some saints. I didn't find this book "mildly sacrilegious" as the title stated, I think it was immensely sacrilegious throughout and downright blasphemous at times. I didn't find the jokes to be very funny; some were mildly amusing and most were juvenile humor, at best. The funniest line in the book was, "Purgatory is a temporary hell, much like flying out of Newark." (I would venture to say that Purgatory likely smells better and is more enjoyable than flying out of Newark.) I gave the book three stars for the historical research and knowledge about saints and Catholicism and am disappointed that I couldn't rate it higher. I received an arc digital book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

How to Be a Saint: An Extremely Weird and Mildly Sacrilegious History of The Catholic Church's Biggest Names by Kate Sidley is an interesting look at the process of becoming a Saint.

Let me first start off with saying that you definitely have to have a sense of humor to read this book.

I am Catholic and misunderstood what this novel was about before starting it, but I can still take things as they are. While I didn’t agree with a lot of things in the way they were presented, it doesn’t mean I couldn’t chuckle or appreciate the intellect of which the author must have to present things with sarcasm, sass, and satire.

4/5 stars

Thank you to SOURCEBOOKS (non-fiction) | Sourcebooks for this wonderful physical arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 8/19/25.

"How to Be a Saint" by Kate Sidley was a riot and I loved reading it! So hilarious. But also, I enjoyed learning about some of the basics of Catholicism. This was a really fun read, but also really informative. I'm a Protestant, but my father converted to Catholicism several years ago and I wanted to understand it more. The book kept my attention the whole way through, I loved the tone and the humor was fresh and hilarious. Thank you to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.