First saints for Venezuela and Papua New Guinea canonised

‘Today we have before us seven witnesses, the new saints, who with God’s grace, kept the lamp of faith burning,’ Pope Leo said at the canonisation Mass.

Pope Leo XIV proclaimed seven new saints on Sunday before an estimated 70,000 people in St Peter’s Square.

The seven included the first canonised saints from Venezuela and Papua New Guinea and a former Satanist who underwent a dramatic conversion to become an “apostle of the rosary”.

“Today we have before us seven witnesses, the new saints, who with God’s grace, kept the lamp of faith burning,” Pope Leo said in his homily. “Indeed, they themselves became lamps capable of spreading the light of Christ.”

He continued: “May their intercession assist us in our trials and their example inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness.”

There were Venezuelan flags waving across the square as the Pope declared two of the country’s beloved figures saints: José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, known as “the doctor of the poor”, and María del Carmen Rendiles Martínez, a religious sister born without her left arm who went on to found the Servants of Jesus in Caracas in 1965.

Among the other new saints were two martyrs. Peter To Rot, a lay catechist martyred in Papua New Guinea during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War, became the country’s first saint. To Rot defied Japanese authorities who permitted polygamy, defending Christian marriage until his death.

Ignatius Maloyan, an Armenian Catholic archbishop, was executed during the Armenian genocide after refusing to convert to Islam. “I consider the shedding of my blood for my faith to be the sweetest desire of my heart,” Maloyan said before his death. “If I am tortured for the love of him who died for me, I will be among those who will have joy and bliss, and I will have obtained to see my Lord and my God.”

Among the best known of the new saints is St Bartolo Longo, a nineteenth-century Italian lawyer who abandoned his Catholic faith for Satanism before returning to the Church. Longo then dedicated his life to promoting the Rosary and built the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompeii, now one of Italy’s most beloved Marian pilgrimage sites.

In his homily, Pope Leo said that “what is most precious in the Lord’s eyes” is “faith, namely, the bond of love between God and man”.

“Our relationship with God is of the utmost importance because at the beginning of time he created all things out of nothing and, at the end of time, he will save mortal beings from nothingness,” he said. “A world without faith, then, would be populated by children living without a father, that is, by creatures without salvation.”

Two Italian women were also declared saints. Vincenza Maria Poloni founded the Sisters of Mercy of Verona and is remembered for her tireless service to the poor, including at the risk of her life during the cholera epidemic of 1836.

Maria Troncatti, a Salesian sister, spent 44 years as a missionary among the Indigenous Shuar people in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. Known affectionately as “Madrecita”, or “little mother”, she served as a nurse, surgeon, and catechist with missionary zeal.

The canonisation coincided with World Mission Sunday. Before praying the Angelus, Pope Leo, who served as an Augustinian missionary in Peru, for prayers for today’s missionaries.

“The Church is entirely missionary, but today we pray especially for those men and women who left everything to bring the Gospel to those who do not know it. They are missionaries of hope among the people. May the Lord bless them,” he said.

The Pope also made a heartfelt plea for peace, grieving at renewed violence in Myanmar.

“The news coming from Myanmar is sadly distressing,” he said. “I renew my heartfelt appeal for an immediate and effective ceasefire. May the instruments of war give way to those of peace, through inclusive and constructive dialogue.”

Pope Leo entrusted his prayer for peace to the intercession of the new saints, praying in particular for the Holy Land, Ukraine, and other places of conflict.

“May God grant all leaders wisdom and perseverance to advance in the search for a just and lasting peace,” he said.

Robert Prevost, the missionary bishop 

Canonisations: the good vs the great

Stay updated — add us as a preferred news source on Google: