When Pope Leo XIV raises three women and four men to the altar Oct. 19, he will canonize a diverse group of religious and lay men and women, all bound by the virtue of holding on to their faith amid personal, spiritual, and external challenges.
Canonization
At a packed canonization Mass in Rome, with 80,000 attending, it was the face of the mother that said it all during the canonization Mass — Antonia Salzano was moved beyond words when her son, Carlo Acutis, was officially declared saint of the Catholic Church.
The greatest risk in life is to waste it by not seeking to follow God’s plan, Pope Leo XIV said, proclaiming two new saints — two young laymen of the 20th and 21st centuries.
A new statue depicting Blessed Carlo Acutis is a message that conveys to the world that the Catholic Church is not an old institution but a young and vibrant Church with a relevant message for today’s culture, the statue’s sculptor said.
With the death of Pope Francis, the April 27 canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis was postponed and the Mass scheduled for that day will be a memorial Mass, the Vatican said.
Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of one woman and five men, including Antoni Gaudí, the Spanish architect who designed the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.
For centuries, pilgrims came to Assisi to walk in the footsteps of a saint who preached to birds, embraced poverty, and wandered the hills barefoot. But today, many arrive in search of a different model of holiness: that of a teenager in Nike sneakers who built websites and coded for Christ.
Pope Francis has cleared the way for the canonizations of three blesseds: an Armenian Catholic archbishop martyred during the Armenian genocide, a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea killed during World War II, and a Venezuelan religious sister who dedicated her life to education and the poor.
Despite a few high-profile delays in recent years, the canonization of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen — the popular, scholarly archbishop and 20th-century pioneer of Catholic broadcasting — is “inevitable,” said the head of the foundation supporting his cause.
Pope Francis announced that he will canonize Blesseds Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati next year and that the Vatican will host a world meeting on the rights of the child Feb. 3.