A total of seven people will be added to the list of
Catholic saints.
The new saints include the Armenian-Catholic
Archbishop of Mardin, Ignatius Choukrallah Maloyan, who was executed in
1915 during the Armenian genocide.
The layman and catechist Peter To Rot
from Papua New Guinea, who was murdered during the Japanese occupation
in the Second World War because of his pastoral work, will also be
canonised.
Women religious among the new saints
The Church also honours three women religious: Vincenza Maria Poloni
from Verona, founder of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy, Maria del
Monte Carmelo Rendiles Martínez from Venezuela, founder of the
Congregation of the Servants of Jesus, and the Salesian and missionary
sister Maria Troncatti, who provided both medical and pastoral care to
indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon region.
In
Latin America, the Venezuelan doctor José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros is
highly honoured as the "doctor of the poor".
Bartolo Longo, a former
lawyer who turned his back on Satanism and later became one of the most
important promoters of the rosary and the shrine of Pompeii, is also
raised to the honour of the altars.
The celebration on 19 October will be the second canonisation by Pope Leo XIV. He had already canonised the two Italian youths Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati in St. Peter's Square in September.