What do you mjean by playing devils advocate?
Formerly, during the canonization process by the Roman Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith or Devil’s Advocate was a Canon lawyer appointed by the Church to argue against the canonization of the proposed candidate. It was his job to take a skeptical view of the proceedings, to look for holes in the evidence and to argue that the miracles attributed to the candidate were fraudulent or not miraculous The office was established in 1587 and was in effect until it was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983. The abolition streamlined the canonization process considerably, helping to usher in John Paul’s unprecedented number of elevations: nearly 500 individuals canonized and over 1,300 beatified, as opposed to 98 canonizations by all his 20th-century predecessors. The increase suggests that the Devil’s Advocate indeed reduced the number of canonization; some hold the opinion it served a useful role in ensuring that canonizations did not proceed without due care and attention and that
