Stairway to Heaven

News Just In:

Vatican beatifies 498 Spanish civil war victims

1. "Beatification is a first step on the road to sainthood."
2. "Most were killed in at the start of the war in 1936 by anti-fascist republican forces."
3. The pope has paid tribute to the "martyrs" of the war, saying they "paid in blood for their faith in Christ and his Church".
4. "Since the Vatican considers the 498 victims - including two bishops, 24 priests, 462 nuns and monks, three deacons or seminarians and seven lay people - to be martyrs, the requirement of evidence of having performed a miracle was waived."
   

I suppose it's enough of a miracle that they have made it this far on the stairway to heaven.

I wonder what Ernest Hemmingway would have written about this story?