No Catholic posits that an human saint has any powers "independent" of God. And certainly no one thinks that any human or any other created being is "equal" to God.
You should study what the Faith teaches about saints sometime. They are not free agents. They won't thwart God to do their own will. You're not getting your prayer answered by Jude if God does not will it to be.
One can logically dispense with the saints as "superfluous." But that's kind of the point. They are a special gift God has given us, above and beyond what is merely "necessary."
Furthermore, we are called into a relationship not only with God, but with the entire family of people He has gathered to Him. To dismiss those who died before us as unnecessary is like going to Thanksgiving dinner and only talking to your father. Cousins and uncles and aunts are so unnecessary in order to talk to your father. But you can not truly know him unless you know his family.
SD