Pope Francis will canonize 14 news saints on Sunday, including three founders of religious orders and 11 martyrs who were killed in Damascus in 1860.
The soon-to-be-saints all lived in the 1800s. Their lives spanned three continents, and they include priests, religious sisters, and married men.
Marie-Léonie Paradis
Alodie-Virginie Paradis was born in 1840 in Quebec. At 18 years old, she took vows with the Marianites of Saint-Laurent, taking the name of Marie de Sainte-Léonie.
Paradis worked in an orphanage in New York for several years and later taught in the community novitiate in Indiana and then in New Brunswick.
Feeling called to work with young women in New Brunswick, Paradis founded a new order in 1880: the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, dedicated to supporting priests in their apostolic work.
After failing to obtain approval from her local bishop in St. John, New Brunswick, she was invited to Sherbrooke, where the bishop welcomed the new community to serve in the local seminary.
Many of the sisters who joined the new order came from poor and uneducated backgrounds. Paradis considered their formation part of the order’s work as well. She once said that “The community of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family was founded to give poor, uneducated young girls the advantages of religious life.”
Paradis died of cancer in 1912. She was beatified in 1984 by Pope John Paul II in Montreal.
Giuseppe Allamano
Giuseppe Allamano was born in Asti, Italy in 1851.
At age 15, he entered seminary, and he was ordained a priest in Turin in 1873. He dreamed of being a missionary, but his poor health prevented it. As a priest, he was tasked with seminary formation and appointed rector of Turin’s largest Marian shrine.
Still, his love for missionary work never waned. In 1901, Allamano founded the Consolata Missionary Institute, a missionary society for priests and laymen. A few years later, he founded a female branch of the institute, the Consolata Missionary Sisters.
The new missionary institute focused on evangelization and care for the poor throughout the world, providing health care, education and humanitarian aid as well as religious instruction.
Allemano himself never became a missionary. He died in 1926 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1990.
The Consolata missionaries are today present in 28 countries around the world, with some 2000 members globally.
Elena Guerra
Elena Guerra was born in 1835 to wealthy parents in Lucca, Italy. She had five brothers and sisters.
From her youth, Guerra had a passion for tending to the poor and ill. She worked with the Vincentians as a teenager to care for cholera patients.
Guerra herself became very ill in her early 20s, and was homebound for nearly a decade as a result.
After she recovered, she founded the Oblate Sisters of the Holy Spirit, dedicated to spreading devotion to the Holy Spirit and to the education of young people. Today, the congregation has religious sisters in several countries.
Guerra said she wanted her religious sisters to be “souls always listening and docile to every breath of Grace.”
From 1885-1903, Guerra wrote a series of letters to Pope Leo XIII. She urged him to promote greater devotion to the Holy Spirit.
Encouraged by her writings, the pope released an apostolic letter and later an encyclical on the topic of the Holy Spirit. Leo also introduced the novena to the Holy Spirit, prayed between Pentecost and Ascension, which remains popular today.
Guerra died in 1914. She was beatified in 1959 by Pope John XXIII, who referred to her as an “apostle of the Holy Spirit.”
The Martyrs of Damascus
This group of 11 martyrs was killed for their faith during the 1860 persecution of Christians by a Shiite sect known as the Druze.
A group of Druze extremists entered the Franciscan convent of St. Paul in Damascus overnight on July 9-10, 1860. They demanded that those present renounce their faith and convert to Islam.
The 11 men present refused, and were killed.
Eight of the martyrs were Franciscan friars of the Custody of the Holy Land – two brothers and six priests. The other three were lay Maronites - three biological brothers who had sought shelter from the Druze at the Franciscan church.
The liturgical calendar of the Custody of the Holy Land celebrates the martyrs of Damascus each year on July 10. The feast is observed by both the Latin and Maronite rites.
The news of their canonization was welcomed by Fr. Firas Lufti, a Franciscan Friar of the Custody of the Holy Land, who works at the convent where the men were killed, which today houses their relics.
Firas said the canonization provides hope “at a time when the whole of the Middle East, including Syria, is living through moments of drama and conflict, war and crisis.”
