Short answers, pulled from the story.
Pope John XV canonized Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg on the 3rd of January 993. This event marked the first official declaration of sainthood for a person from outside the diocese of Rome. The decision shifted the power to declare sainthood from local bishops to the highest office of the Church.
The Greek term hagioi appears 235 times in the Greek New Testament and designates all Christians in a given locality as a collective people set apart for God. The Apostle Paul used this plural term to identify the entire community of believers as saints rather than a select elite. Standard reference works confirm that hagioi refers to all believers and implies consecration and belonging to God.
The Catholic Church requires at least two important miracles through the intercession of the candidate before the Pope can officially declare them a saint. These miracles must be instantaneous medical recoveries that are not attributable to treatment and disappear for good. A panel of theologians validated the miracle of Jack Sullivan in 2009 when he was cured of spinal stenosis after praying to John Henry Newman.
The Eastern Orthodox Church defines a saint as anyone who is in Heaven besides God whether recognized here on earth or not. This definition includes figures such as Adam and Eve, Moses, the prophets, and archangels who are in communion with God. The Orthodox belief holds that God reveals saints through answered prayers and that the Church recognizes them through a service of glorification rather than making them saints.
Many Protestants consider intercessory prayers to the saints to be idolatry since they perceive it as an application of divine worship that should be given only to God himself. The Lutheran Church states through the Augsburg Confession that Scripture does not teach calling on the saints or pleading for help from them. Evangelical-Lutherans view saints as examples of faith to be imitated rather than mediators of redemption.
In Hinduism, saints are recognized as showing a great degree of holiness and sanctity without a formal canonization process but rather acceptance as saints during their lifetime. In Islam, saints known as wali or fakir possess blessings and can perform miracles while ranking lower than prophets but able to intercede for people on the Day of Judgment. The veneration of saints became one of the most widespread Sunni practices for more than a millennium with the vast majority of saints venerated in the classical Sunni world being Sufis.