On Thursday, Pope Francis made a private announcement with Rome's priests and declared that late Pope Paul VI will be made a saint this year.
The former pope - born Giovanni Battista Montini in 1897 - led the Roman Catholic Church during a time where the Second Vatican Council was almost concluded and assisted in the implementation of modern reforms in the church. It was also around the time when many priests left the order and vocations due to the changing society.
The former pope is also well-known for his encyclical Humane Vitae (On Human Life), which highlighted the Church's ban on artificial birth control in 1968. He passed away in 1978.
He was beatified in 2014 after the first miracle was attributed to him and earlier this month, a second miracle had been attributed to him by a Vatican theological and medical commission.
According to Church teachings, saints who are with God in heaven intercede on the behalf of people who pray to them. Their miracles often involve a person being cured from a medically inexplicable ailment or disease.
When he is canonized this year, Paul will be the third pope that Pope Francis has made a saint since he took the papacy five years ago. The other popes who became saints under Francis' reign include John XXIII, who died in 1963, and John Paul, who died in 2005.
In the transcript of the meeting released on Saturday, Pope Francis also joked that he and former Pope Benedict XVI are "on the waiting list" to become pope.
