Pope Francis gave the Catholic Church a raft of new saints which included hundreds of the 15th century martyrs that were beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam, before tens of thousands of people in St Peter’s square.
In 1480, the 813 Italians that were killed in the southern Italian city for defying the Turkish invaders’ demands to renounce Christianity are known as the “Martyrs of Otranto.”
The South American pope also canonized two Latin American women. One of the two women was Colombia’s first saint who was a nun by the names of Laura of St Catherine of Siena. She, alongside five other women journeyed into the forests in 1914 to be a spiritual guide and teacher to the indigenous people. There were a number of VIPs that attended the ceremony, among them Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president.
Among those canonized was Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala who was a Mexican who dedicated herself to nursing the sick. She also helped Catholics avoid persecution during a government crackdown on the faith in the 1920s. Maria was also known as Mother Lupita, and following the refusal of fearful local catholic families to shelter him, she hid the archbishop of Guadalajara in an eye clinic for more than a year.
In the same ceremony in which he announced his resignation as Pontiff, on 11 February, Pope Benedict XVI also read a decree in which the canonization of the new saints were approved. The first pope to retire in 600 years, Benedict is now devoting himself to prayer and is living in a monastery on the Vatican grounds.
Pope Francis cited that a number of Christians in these times and in so many parts of the world still suffer violence, he told the crowd that the martyrs were a source of inspiration and prayed that the suffering Christians would receive the courage of loyalty and respond to evil with good.
His remark was seen as a reference to the Christian churches that have been attacked in Iraq and Nigeria, in addition to the Catholics in China who were loyal to the Vatican and were subjected to harassment and sometimes jail over the past decades.
The first pope from the Jesuit order, Francis praised the Colombian saint for “instilling hope” in indigenous people. The pope said that she taught them in a way that “respected their culture”. A number of Catholics missionaries were criticized for demanding that natives renounce local traditions that are viewed as primitive over the centuries.
Francis hailed the Mexican for renouncing a comfortable life in order to work with the poor and sick. He said that Mother Lupita’s example should encourage people not to get wrapped up in themselves.
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