In general, all faithful people are "saints". But some people, by their life and witness, are clear role models for the saints of god, and are designated "Saint" as a sign that we recognize their witness. There is no one official source that can declare that so-and-so is a "Saint", and that so-and-so-else is not. The recognition of a Saint's witness can only come by consensus of the Church as a whole (the Church is "the whole company of all faithful people").

There are Saints who have been Canonized by the Roman Catholic Church and by the Orthodox church, who would generally not be recognized as Saints by the rest of the Church. There are local Saints who are recognized by those to whom they witnessed, but are not recognized by the church as a whole. There are Saints that just about everybody agrees on, and Saints that only Anglicans would recognize (like Thomas Cranmer, Saint and Martyr) and some of those that even most Anglicans wouldn't recognize (Like King Charles I, Saint and Martyr).

Anglicans are perfectly comfortable with this level of anarchy.

Although we do not canonize Saints, we do have a process of "Kalendarizing" saints. A notable witness to the faith may be listed in the Kalendar with a special day of observation. The Saints who are given red-letter days in the Kalendar (the equivalent of your "Holy Days of Obligation") tend to be the new-testament Saints that everyone agrees on: Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint Jean Baptiste, and so on. Others are listed as "black-letter days" without distinction between how formal or extensive their recognition is: Justin Martyr, Doctor, c. 165 is listed in exactly the same way as Florence Nightingale, Nurse, 1910. Charles Inglis, the first Anglican Bishop in Canada, is listed right beside Laurence, Archdeacon of Rome. Of course, a person doesn't *have* to be Kalendarized in order to be considered a Saint by at least some Anglicans. There are Anglicans who already refer to Mother Teresa as "Saint Teresa of Calcutta" -- a slightly ironic recognition in the light that her own church cannot yet recognize her as such.


Does this mean we consider Florence Nightingale to be a Saint? Well, there's not much question she was one of the saints, and she certainly is a witness to many of a Christian life well-lived. So the answer is, as for so many things Anglican:

Some of us do, and some of us don't.