Call God - successive calls require more points?

[Piggles]

I took over for another player in a mp game recently and noticed their pretender was dead, so I promptly assigned a bunch of people to Call God. I painstakingly counted and recounted them to make sure their holy levels added up to exactly 40, but when I received the next turn my pretender was still dead. Since I'm 95% sure I counted them correctly, the only thing I could figure is that the pretender died a couple times, and maybe successive callings require more than 40 points? Can anyone confirm that, or do I need to go back to school and relearn how to count?

Also, it occurred to me that maybe some of the people I assigned died of disease/old age. But according to the manual, diseases take their toll during the heal step, which is almost last in the turn resolution sequence, followed by mercenaries and scouting.