These are the 14 people who will be canonized saints this weekend
Elena Guerra, Marie-Léonie Paradis, and Giuseppe Allamano are among the Blesseds whom Pope Francis will canonize on Oct. 20, 2024. / Credit: Oblates of the Holy Spirit; centremarie-leonieparadis.com; and Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Vatican City, Oct 17, 2024 / 18:10 pm (CNA). Among the 14 people who will become the Catholic Church’s newest saints on Sunday is a priest whose intercession led to the miraculous healing of a man mauled by a jaguar, a woman who convinced a pope to call for a worldwide novena to the Holy Spirit, and 11 men killed in Syria for refusing to renounce their faith and convert to Islam.While not household names, the 14 soon-to-be saints each exemplified heroic virtue and witnessed to holiness within their unique vocations, including two married men — a father of eight and a father of five, respectively — and three founders of religious orders who have generations of spiritual children who have continued their spiritual legacy throughout the world.Pope Francis invited all Catholics this week to get to “learn about these new saints and ask for their intercession” in anticipation of the canonization in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 20.“They are a clear testimony of the Holy Spirit’s action in the life of the Church,” the pope said.Mother Elena Guerra (1835–1914)Known as an “apostle of the Holy Spirit,” Blessed Elena Guerra helped to convince Pope Leo XIII to exhort all Catholics to pray a novena to the Holy Spirit leading up to Pentecost in 1895.Guerra is the foundress of the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, a congregation of religious sisters recognized by the Church in 1882 that continues today in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.A friend of Pope Leo XIII and the teacher of St. Gemma Galgani, Guerra is remembered for her spiritual writings and her passionate devotion to the Holy Spirit.“Pentecost is not over,” Guerra wrote. “In fact, it is continually going on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give himself to all men and all who want him can always receive him, so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only have to dispose ourselves like them to receive him well, and he will come to us as he did to them.”For much of her 20s, Guerra was bedridden with a serious illness, a challenge that turned out to be transformational for her as she dedicated herself to meditating on Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. She felt the call to consecrate herself to God during a pilgrimage to Rome with her father after her recovery and went on to form the religious community dedicated to education.During her correspondence with Pope Leo XIII, Guerra composed prayers to the Holy Spirit, including a Holy Spirit Chaplet, asking the Lord to “send forth your spirit and renew the world.”St. Elena Guerra. Credit: Oblates of the Holy SpiritFather Giuseppe Allamano (1851–1926)Blessed Giuseppe Allamano remained a diocesan priest in Italy his entire life yet left a global legacy by founding two missionary religious orders — the Consolata Missionaries and the Consolata Missionary Sisters — that went on to spread the Gospel in Kenya, Ethiopia, Brazil, Taiwan, Mongolia, and more than two dozen other countries.Allamano told the priests in the order he founded in northern Italy in 1901 that they needed to be “first saints, then missionaries.”“As missionaries then, you must not only be holy, but extraordinarily holy. All the other gifts are not enough to make a missionary! It takes holiness, great holiness,” he said.Allamano set the example by “combining the commitment to holiness with attention to the spiritual and social needs of his time,” Pope John Paul II said at his beatification. “He had a deep conviction that ‘the priest is first and foremost a man of charity,’ ‘destined to do the greatest possible good,’ to sanctify others ‘with example and word,’ with holiness and knowledge.”He was deeply influenced by the spirituality of the Salesians and St. John Bosco, who served as his spiritual director, as well as the witness of his saintly uncle, St. Joseph Cafasso.Allamano is being canonized after the Vatican recognized a unique medical miracle attributed to his intercession — the healing of a man who was attacked by a jaguar in the Amazon rainforest.Sorino Yanomami, an Indigenous man who lived in the Amazon rainforest, was mauled by a jaguar in 1996, fracturing his skull. Due to his remote location, it took eight hours before he could be airlifted to a hospital. While he was being treated in the ICU, six Consolata missionary sisters, as well as a Consolata priest and brother, waited with the man’s wife, praying with a relic of Blessed Allamano for his intercession. The sisters also prayed a novena to Allamano asking for the man’s healing, and 10 days after his operation he woke up without any neurological damage and suffered no long-term consequences of the attack, according to the Vatican Dicastery for the Cause
Elena Guerra, Marie-Léonie Paradis, and Giuseppe Allamano are among the Blesseds whom Pope Francis will canonize on Oct. 20, 2024. / Credit: Oblates of the Holy Spirit; centremarie-leonieparadis.com; and Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Vatican City, Oct 17, 2024 / 18:10 pm (CNA).
Among the 14 people who will become the Catholic Church’s newest saints on Sunday is a priest whose intercession led to the miraculous healing of a man mauled by a jaguar, a woman who convinced a pope to call for a worldwide novena to the Holy Spirit, and 11 men killed in Syria for refusing to renounce their faith and convert to Islam.While not household names, the 14 soon-to-be saints each exemplified heroic virtue and witnessed to holiness within their unique vocations, including two married men — a father of eight and a father of five, respectively — and three founders of religious orders who have generations of spiritual children who have continued their spiritual legacy throughout the world.Pope Francis invited all Catholics this week to get to “learn about these new saints and ask for their intercession” in anticipation of the canonization in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 20.“They are a clear testimony of the Holy Spirit’s action in the life of the Church,” the pope said.Mother Elena Guerra (1835–1914)Known as an “apostle of the Holy Spirit,” Blessed Elena Guerra helped to convince Pope Leo XIII to exhort all Catholics to pray a novena to the Holy Spirit leading up to Pentecost in 1895.Guerra is the foundress of the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, a congregation of religious sisters recognized by the Church in 1882 that continues today in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.A friend of Pope Leo XIII and the teacher of St. Gemma Galgani, Guerra is remembered for her spiritual writings and her passionate devotion to the Holy Spirit.“Pentecost is not over,” Guerra wrote. “In fact, it is continually going on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give himself to all men and all who want him can always receive him, so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only have to dispose ourselves like them to receive him well, and he will come to us as he did to them.”For much of her 20s, Guerra was bedridden with a serious illness, a challenge that turned out to be transformational for her as she dedicated herself to meditating on Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. She felt the call to consecrate herself to God during a pilgrimage to Rome with her father after her recovery and went on to form the religious community dedicated to education.During her correspondence with Pope Leo XIII, Guerra composed prayers to the Holy Spirit, including a Holy Spirit Chaplet, asking the Lord to “send forth your spirit and renew the world.”St. Elena Guerra. Credit: Oblates of the Holy SpiritFather Giuseppe Allamano (1851–1926)Blessed Giuseppe Allamano remained a diocesan priest in Italy his entire life yet left a global legacy by founding two missionary religious orders — the Consolata Missionaries and the Consolata Missionary Sisters — that went on to spread the Gospel in Kenya, Ethiopia, Brazil, Taiwan, Mongolia, and more than two dozen other countries.Allamano told the priests in the order he founded in northern Italy in 1901 that they needed to be “first saints, then missionaries.”“As missionaries then, you must not only be holy, but extraordinarily holy. All the other gifts are not enough to make a missionary! It takes holiness, great holiness,” he said.Allamano set the example by “combining the commitment to holiness with attention to the spiritual and social needs of his time,” Pope John Paul II said at his beatification. “He had a deep conviction that ‘the priest is first and foremost a man of charity,’ ‘destined to do the greatest possible good,’ to sanctify others ‘with example and word,’ with holiness and knowledge.”He was deeply influenced by the spirituality of the Salesians and St. John Bosco, who served as his spiritual director, as well as the witness of his saintly uncle, St. Joseph Cafasso.Allamano is being canonized after the Vatican recognized a unique medical miracle attributed to his intercession — the healing of a man who was attacked by a jaguar in the Amazon rainforest.Sorino Yanomami, an Indigenous man who lived in the Amazon rainforest, was mauled by a jaguar in 1996, fracturing his skull. Due to his remote location, it took eight hours before he could be airlifted to a hospital. While he was being treated in the ICU, six Consolata missionary sisters, as well as a Consolata priest and brother, waited with the man’s wife, praying with a relic of Blessed Allamano for his intercession. The sisters also prayed a novena to Allamano asking for the man’s healing, and 10 days after his operation he woke up without any neurological damage and suffered no long-term consequences of the attack, according to the Vatican Dicastery for the Cause
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