The saints-to-be on the facade of St. Peter's Basilica for tomorrow's rite. From left, Kateri Tekakwitha, Mother Maria del Carmen, Pedro Calungsod, Fr. Berthieu, Fr. Piamarta, Mother Marianne Cope, and Anna Schaffer.
I've not posted any of the preparatory stories for the canonizations tomorrow because all of it has been centered on the two 'American' women saints-to-be. As inspiring as their stories are, they are also among the best-known already, and I feel it is unfair to 'ignore' the other 5 in reporting on the event tomorrow. This one, for a change, gives all seven almost 'equal time' -and it has to come from a 'farflung' source. Of course, I have a parochial interest, too, because the youngest of the seven saints-to-be was a 17th-century Filipino teenage martyr...
Church to canonize
7 new saints tomorrow
Oct. 20, 2012
The Catholic Church will canonize seven new saints tomorrow, Sunday, October 21, in St. Peter’s Square.
Among the new saints, two come from the United States, Blessed Marianne Cope of Molokai and Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha.
Mother Marianne (Barbara Koob, 1838-1918) was born in Germany and grew up in Utica, New York. She joined the Sisters of Saint Francis in Syracuse in 1862 and became a leader at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse in 1869.
She led a group of Sisters from New York to the Hawaiian Islands in 1883 to establish a system of nursing care for leprosy patients. She never returned to New York, and ministered on Molokai in a place called Kalaupapa.
Blessed Kateri, daughter of a Christian Algonquin mother and a Mohawk father in upstate New York, becomes the first Native American to be canonized. She was baptized by a Jesuit missionary in 1676 when she was 20; she died in Canada four years later.
The other saints are Jesuit priest Jacques Berthieu who was born in Polminhac, France, and martyred on June 8, 1896, in Ambiatibe, Madagascar.
Pedro Calungsod, a lay catechist born in Cebu, in the Philippines, was martyred on April 2, 1672, in Guam, where he had been assisting Spanish missionaries.
Father Giovanni Battista Piamarta, Italian priest and founder of the Congregation of the Holy Family of Nazareth for men and the Humble Servants of the Lord for women. He died in 1913.
Carmen Salles y Barangueras, Spanish founder of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. She worked with disadvantaged girls and prostitutes and saw that early education was essential for helping young women. She died in 1911.
Anna Schaffer, a lay German woman who wanted to be a missionary, but could not because of a succession of physical accidents and diseases. She accepted her infirmity as a way of sanctification. Her grave has been a pilgrimage site since her death in 1925.
At least 5,000 Filipino pilgrims are expected to attend the canonization rites for Pedro Calungsod, the news site Interaksyon reported. The pilgrims will be led by some 200 priests, cardinals, bishops, and archbishops.
Calungsod is only the second Filipino to be declared a saint. The first was San Lorenzo Ruiz of Manila, also martyred in the 17th century while serving a mission from the Philippines to evangelize in Japan.
In the United States, busloads of religious pilgrims left Syracuse on Monday, bound for flights to Rome for Sunday’s canonization of Marianne Cope.
Meanwhile, the head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints said saints are “indispensable protagonists” of the New Evangelization, which is the focus of the ongoing synod in Rome.
“The saints evangelize by their virtuous lives,” said Cardinal Angelo Amato. “They incarnate the evangelical beatitudes. They are the mirror to fidelity to Christ,” he was quoted as saying by the Catholic News Agency.
More from Cardinal Amato's interview:
Saints are example
for how to evangelize,
says Cardinal Amato
By Matthew A. Rarey
Vatican City, Oct 17, 2012 (CNA/EWTN News).- The head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared saints the “indispensable protagonists” of the New Evangelization, which is the focus of the ongoing synod in Rome.
“The saints evangelize by their virtuous lives,” said Cardinal Angelo Amato during the Oct. 15 afternoon session of the synod of bishops on the New Evangelization. “They incarnate the evangelical beatitudes. They are the mirror to fidelity to Christ.”
His comments come just days before Pope Benedict XVI canonizes seven new saints at Oct. 21 Mass in St. Peter’s Square.
Cardinal Amato, an Italian, noted that the theme of sanctity in the Church, “in her being and in the acting of her children,” permeates the working document of the synod.
This is because “in the saints the Church offers an edifying display of the Gospel lived out, witnessed to, and proclaimed sine glossa (without gloss).”
This witness is universally attractive to people in all times and places, he noted.
“Every culture is capable of being evangelized, and charity is its greatest instrument to evangelize people,” the archbishop said.
“The history of the Church…records saints of every age, country, race, language and culture, so that the grace of God the Trinity might be like the morning dew. … It is the same with sanctity which, though being unique as a Divine gift, lightly penetrates and transforms the hearts of children of the Church all around the world.”
To show the universal reach of the Gospel message, he concluded his remarks by giving the example of Devesahayam Pillai, an 18th-century Hindu convert to Catholicism whom Pope Benedict XVI declared venerable in June 2012.
“His father was a Brahman. His mother was from a warrior caste,” Cardinal Armato noted. Rather than renounce his new-found faith, Pillai suffered martyrdom and is at the second stage in the Church’s canonization process.
I shall waste my time partially translating the following item because it illustrates how Vaticanistas - even an Italian one like Galeazzi - and Catholic news media - even a noteworthy Catholic initiative by a secular newspaper (La Stampa) as Vatican Insider is - 1) can and do pander to the most widespread common denominator among media customers, namely, gullibility and a totally a-critical readiness to take anything peddled by the media, online and elswhere, to be 'gospel truth'; and 2) can and do make the most outrageous of tenuous connections between unrelated events.
In this case, the completely fallacious assumption that the two Americans to be named saints tomorrow are part of a Vatican strategy to be 'friendly' to the White House. a) The Vatican does not need to be 'friendly' to a White House that is assaulting religious freedom at its very essence; and b) the causes for the canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha and Marianne Cope began long before the current administration, and has spanned the administration of more than one US President. That their causes reached final approval at this time is totally unrelated to whoever happens to be President of the United States. Galeazzi and the Vatican Insider should be ashamed of indulging the false premise of this article. To even suggest it is preposterous enough.
The diplomacy of 'saints' between
the Vatican and the White House
by Giacomo Galeazzi
Translated from the Italian service of
Oct. 20, 2012
The canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha and Marianne Cope signal a reason for dialogue and encounter between the Vatican and the American Presidency, a signal that is important in view of the coming US presidential elections. [That is absurd. If there is anyting official to be discussed between the Holy See and the US government - not that there is anything particularly pressing right now other than the administration's assault on religious freedom via Obamacare, which is being litigated by dozens of Catholic dioceses and institutions and is therefore sub judice - it will proceed through usual diplomatic channels.]
From the New World to the glory of the altars. President Obama
celebrates the two new US saints - the young Mohawk kateri Tekakwitha, and the German-born missionary to the lepers, Marianne Cope - with the official announcement of the US delegation to the canonization rites,
even in the final rush for his re-election. [C'mon, his underlings saw to it that a delegation was named, and he did not necessarily have any initiative nor interest in it.]
The official announcement from the White House reads: "The preidential delegation will be led by the Ambassador of the United Sattes to the Holy See, Miguel Diaz, along with Sister Agnelle Ching and Siser Kateri MItchell".
Therefore Obama, besides being represented by his man at the Vatican, will also be represented by two sisters who are especially involved in Catholic volunteer work in health care in the states of Hawaii and Montana...
[If someone at the White House had given it more thought, they might have named a ranking Mohawk and a ranking Algonquin to the delegation as well, considering that Kateri becomes the first-ever native American saint).
[The rest of the article describes a celebration held in the Vatican Gardens yesterday that featured delegations from Hawaii and New York performing songs and dances to nonor the saints-to-be, and remarks made by Vatican officials and the US ambassador.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/10/2012 23:44]