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By Jordan King
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An American business owner turned missionary is one step closer to possible sainthood after the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted in favor of progressing his beatification and canonization—an early but significant milestone in a closely scrutinized process.
At their spring assembly in Orlando, Florida, on June 10, members of the USCCB gave formal backing to advancing the canonization causes of New York-born layman John Rick Miller—who is said to have ties to the drugmaker AstraZeneca and the wealthy Cargill-MacMillan family—and Monsignor Joseph Francis Buh, a pioneering missionary priest who helped establish the Catholic Church across northern Minnesota in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The vote does not guarantee that either man will become a saint, but it allows church authorities to open or continue detailed investigations into their lives, an essential step in a process that can take decades. Still, the developments are significant as only a small number of people with close ties to the United States have been canonized by the Catholic Church.
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On May 28, Vatican theologians also advanced the cause of Sister Blandina Segale, an Italian-born nun whose work in the American West earned her the nickname "the Fastest Nun in the West."
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Who Was John Rick Miller?
Miller, who died of cancer in 2015, was a top CEO who quit his corporate career after a religious conversion in 1988 and began missionary work, according to the website of For the Love of God Worldwide, the lay group he founded in 2009.
His biography on the website refers to him as a former CEO of AstraZeneca and managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It also linked him to the Cargill-MacMillan family.
Newsweek has been unable to corroborate these claims via independent corporate records or official histories. We contacted For the Love of God Worldwide, the USCCB, AstraZeneca, the IMF and Cargill Inc. for comment via email outside normal office hours.
For the Love of God Worldwide is "dedicated to rekindling awareness of God's presence through consecration, personal conversion, and prayer" and has expanded to 21 locations globally, with a strong presence in Central and South America, the USCCB said.
The bishops' news release announcing the vote called Miller "a family man, businessman, and international missionary." It said Miller studied restaurant and hotel management, and in business, he "quickly rose through the ranks at several prominent corporations."
In an interview published by Miller's missionary group in 2021, he told journalist Mary Lou McCall that his parents were not practicing Catholics, but that his "family has always had a close relationship with God."
Miller said his grandparents ensured his Catholic education, but he "fell away from God" during college and went into business.
While he did not give many details about his corporate life, Miller said he was living in Kingston, Jamaica, "running a joint venture for a major corporation" and "making good money," when he began to think more about religion.
Miller—who had two children with his wife, an Iraqi woman and practicing Catholic—said he experienced a personal encounter with God after a pilgrimage to a Marian shrine, a holy site dedicated to the Virgin Mary, in the late 1980s.
He said he struggled to return to his corporate life because he felt he was a "new person" and his "layers had to come off."
Miller then began getting involved in the church, leading prayer groups in different parishes, working on evangelizing missions around the world and developing plans to build Catholic shrines honoring the Virgin Mary, according to the USCCB.
Miller, who has received honors from Catholic Church leaders in Colombia and Mexico, died from esophageal cancer on May 30, 2015. His remains are buried beneath the esplanade outside the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Doral, Florida, which his missionary organization describes as a pilgrimage site for the faithful.
Who Was Monsignor Joseph Francis Buh?
Born in present-day Slovenia in 1833, Buh was ordained a priest in 1858 before emigrating to the United States, according to a USCCB news release.
He spent more than five decades serving immigrants, Native American communities and settlers throughout northeastern Minnesota, often traveling long distances to minister in isolated areas.
Buh died in Duluth in 1922 at the age of 88 after more than half a century of missionary work in Minnesota.
The Diocese of Duluth, the regional administrative division of the Roman Catholic Church that covers northeastern Minnesota, began formally exploring Buh's sainthood cause in 2023 under Bishop Daniel Felton, according to the Catholic media organization Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).
How Does the Canonization Process Work?
Canonization is the Catholic Church's formal recognition that a person lived a life of exceptional holiness and is in heaven. The process begins when a local bishop opens a cause and gathers evidence about the candidate's life, writings and reputation for sanctity, according to the Vatican's guidance. Once the Vatican accepts the case, the individual is known as a "Servant of God."
The Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints then reviews the evidence. If the pope recognizes that the candidate lived a life of heroic virtue, they may be declared "Venerable." Beatification, which usually requires recognition of a miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession, grants the title "Blessed." The final step—canonization—typically requires a second miracle and allows the person to be venerated as a saint by the universal church.
The process can take many years, with each stage requiring extensive investigation and Vatican review before a candidate advances to the next step. The Catholic Church recognizes more than 10,000 saints, and according to the USCCB, 11 are American.
Who Was the 'Fastest Nun in the West'?
Segale, another person with close ties to the U.S., is also potentially moving toward sainthood. Recently, Vatican theologians unanimously voted to advance her canonization cause after reviewing thousands of pages of evidence about her life and virtues.
The next step would see cardinals and bishops at the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints consider whether to recommend that Pope Leo XIV declare her Venerable.
Born in Italy in 1850, Segale emigrated to Cincinnati as a child and joined the Sisters of Charity at age 16, according to EWTN News. She spent more than two decades serving communities across Colorado and New Mexico, where she worked in schools, orphanages and hospitals; helped establish educational institutions; and cared for poor and marginalized residents of the American Southwest.
Segale's frontier exploits became part of Wild West folklore. She was said to have intervened to prevent a lynching and famously crossed paths with outlaw Billy the Kid, whom she reportedly persuaded to abandon a plan for revenge after she cared for one of his wounded associates. Those stories later inspired the nickname that continues to define her legacy almost a century after her death in 1941.
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