How institutions can use formal rules in order to maintain power amidst massive discontent is the broad puzzle that my research considers. The material for my analysis comes from the archives of the Congregation for the Sacred Rite in the Catholic Church. The period I choose for setting up my analytical questions is the eve of the Protestant Reformation, when the Church faced a deep challenge. Social turmoil gave rise to heterodox ideas that challenged the hegemonic position of the Church within its territorial core—Italy and Spain. Historians have been interested in the repressive strategy of the Church to shut down popular religiosity, that is, in the use of the Inquisition. Yet, maintaining power also requires consensus. At the same time that it unleashed inquisitorial power, the Church sought to win the hearts of its believers. It did so by using the legitimacy of miracles. My research focuses on the encoding of popular religiosity into an institution central for the Church—sainthood. This perspective allows me to see how miracles mobilized people and were used by entrepreneurs, who I will call acolytes, to generate social movements. Rules made then possible the incorporation of consensus for Catholicism at large by decoupling the local content of miracles from their form. By looking at the testimonies of 511 miracles recalled from more than a 1,000 people in 23 or so canonization trials, I will present evidence that acolytes built networks across kinship and status differences. Regardless of their content, miracles that had the form of bridging individuals were more likely to be approved. This process was the basis for the reorganization of the religious beliefs of millions of people.