Pope Leo XIV Photo: IPA, Independent Photo Agency Srl / Alamy / Profimedia
Bells tolled in St. Peter's Square on Sunday as Pope Leo canonized seven new saints of the Catholic Church, including the first native of Papua New Guinea, an archbishop executed during the Armenian genocide and the “doctor of the poor” in Venezuela, reports AFP.
During this solemn mass, which began at 10:30 local time in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican, three nuns who dedicated their lives to the poor and the sick, as well as former Satanist priest Bartolo Longo, were also canonized.
Born in 1841, this Italian lawyer embraced the Catholic faith and founded the pontifical sanctuary of Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompeii.
Among those canonized are the first Papua New Guinean saint, layman Peter To Rot (1912-1945), executed by the Japanese at the end of World War II, as well as Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, an Armenian bishop and martyr killed in 1915 by Ottoman forces for refusing to convert to Islam.
Alongside them is the Venezuelan layman José Gregorio Hernandez Cisneros (1864-1919), whom Pope Francis described as “the physician of the weakest”, already revered in his country.
Also originally from Venezuela, Maria Carmen Elena Rendiles Martinez, a nun born without her left arm, overcame her disability and founded the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus before her death in 1977. She thus became the first saint of this South American country.
The canonized Italian nuns are Vincenza Maria Poloni, founder in the 19th century of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy in Verona, which mainly cares for the sick in hospitals, and Maria Troncatti (1883-1969), who dedicated her life to helping the indigenous population of Ecuador.
Huge portraits of the seven were displayed in the windows facing the square as Leo, the first American pope, emerged from St. Peter's Basilica in a ceremonial white cassock and wearing a white miter, preceded by white-robed bishops and cardinals.
Cardinal Marcello Semararo, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, read aloud the profiles of the seven, to applause from the crowd, before the pope pronounced the formula of canonization, a decree by which they are officially declared saints.
It is the second canonization ceremony presided over by the American pope since his election as head of the Catholic Church on May 8.
In September, he canonized the Italians Carlo Acutis – a teenager nicknamed “the influence of God”, who died of leukemia at the age of 15 in 2006 – and Pier Giorgio Frassati, considered a model of charity, who died in 1925.
Canonization, the final step to sainthood in the Catholic Church that follows beatification, is the result of a long process and can only be approved by the pope. It imposes three conditions: to have been dead for at least five years, to have led an exemplary Christian life, and to have performed at least two miracles.
