Pope canonizes seven saints

Friday, Oct. 21, 2016

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The seven new saints of the church were holy not because of their own efforts but because of “the Lord who triumphs in them and with them,” Pope Francis said. Each one “struggled to the very end with all their strength,” which they received through perseverance and prayer, the pope said Oct. 16 at the canonization Mass in St. Peter’s Square.

 “They remained firm in faith, with a generous and steadfast heart. Through their example and their intercession, may God also enable us to be men and women of prayer,” the pope said.

Seven large tapestries bearing the portraits of the new saints decorated the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Argentine “gaucho priest” St. Jose Gabriel del Rosario Brochero traveled thousands of miles to minister to the poor and the sick. 

St. Jose Sanchez del Rio, a 14-year-old Mexican boy, was martyred for refusing to renounce his faith during the Cristero War. 

St. Salomone Leclerq was killed after refusing to renounce his faith at the height of the French Revolution. 

Also canonized were the French Carmelite writer and mystic, St. Elizabeth of the Holy Trinity and St. Manuel Gonzalez Garcia, a Spanish bishop who spent his life devoted to Eucharistic adoration, and two new Italian saints: St. Ludovico Pavoni, the founder of the Sons of Mary Immaculate, who dedicated his life to the vocational and spiritual education of the poor and hearing impaired, and St. Alfonso Maria Fusco, founder of the Congregation of the Baptistine Sisters of the Nazarene and of the Little House of Providence, a home for abandoned children.

The celebration began with Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, requesting Pope Francis enroll the six men and one woman “among the saints, that they may be invoked as such by all the Christian faithful.” 

In his homily, the pope said the central theme of the Sunday readings was prayer, an important aspect in the lives of the newly canonized saints and something that obtained for them “the goal of heaven.”