During an ordinary public consistory held today in the Vatican, the Pope announced the canonization of a total of 35 people, the majority of them 16th and 17th century Latin American martyrs. They include 30 Brazilian priests and lay people killed by Dutch soldiers for their refusal to convert to Calvinism during the colonization of north-eastern Brazil in 1645. Three other martyrs were young Mexican boys, educated by Franciscan missionaries and murdered for their refusal to follow the local indigenous religion.
The new saints also include a Spanish priest who founded an institute for abandoned children at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as a Capuchin friar from Naples who defended the rights of the poor in the early 18th century.
Centenary of Marian apparitions
But undoubtedly the best-known names on Thursday’s list of newly proclaimed saints are those of a Portuguese brother and his sister: Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the shepherd children who, along with their cousin Lucia Santos, saw the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima exactly one hundred years ago (in May 1917).
Beatified by Pope John Paul II
Unlike Lucia, who became a nun and lived to the age of 98, Francisco and Jacinta died in childhood, aged just 9 and 11, as a result of the great flu epidemic that swept through Europe in 1918. On May 13th of the year 2000, the two of them were beatified by Pope John Paul II during his pastoral visit to Portugal.
Sister Lucia's cause for beatification
Meanwhile the case for Sister Lucia’s beatification concluded its first phase in Portugal earlier this year and is now being examined at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican.
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