Francis told the crowd that the martyrs are a source of inspiration.
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| Pope Francis waves to pilgrims Sunday in St. Peter's Square at Vatican at the end of a service canonizing hundreds of saints. |
Pope Francis on Sunday gave the Catholic Church new saints, including
hundreds of 15th-century martyrs who were beheaded for refusing to
convert to Islam, as he led his first canonization ceremony Sunday in a
packed St. Peter's Square.
The "Martyrs of Otranto" were 813
Italians who were slain in the southern Italian city in 1480 for defying
demands by Turkish invaders who overran the citadel to renounce
Christianity.
Their approval for sainthood was decided upon by
Francis' predecessor, Benedict XVI, in a decree read at the ceremony in
February where the former pontiff announced his retirement.
Shortly
after his election in March, Francis called for more dialogue with
Muslims, and it was unclear how the granting of sainthood to the martyrs
would be received. Islam is a sensitive subject for the church, and
Benedict stumbled significantly in his relations with the Muslim
community.
The first pontiff from South America also gave Colombia
its first saint: a nun who toiled as a teacher and spiritual guide to
indigenous people in the 20th century.
With Colombia's President
Juan Manuel Santos among the VIPS, the Argentine pope held out Laura of
St. Catherine of Siena Montoya y Upegui as a potential source of
inspiration to the country's peace process, attempted after decades-long
conflict between rebels and government forces.
Francis prayed that "Colombia's beloved children continue to work for peace and just development of the country."
He
also canonized another Latin American woman. Maria Guadalupe Garcia
Zavala, a Mexican who dedicated herself to nursing the sick, helped
Catholics avoid persecution during a government crackdown on the faith
in the 1920s.
Also known as Mother Lupita, she hid the Guadalajara
archbishop in an eye clinic for more than a year after fearful local
Catholic families refused to shelter him.
Francis prayed that the
new Mexican saint's intercession could help the nation "eradicate all
the violence and insecurity," an apparent reference to years of
bloodshed and other crime largely linked to powerful drug trafficking
clans.
Francis told the crowd that the martyrs are a source of
inspiration, especially for "so many Christians, who, right in these
times and in so many parts of the world, still suffer violence." He
prayed that they receive "the courage of loyalty and to respond to evil
with good."
The pope didn't single out any country. But Christian
churches have been attacked in Nigeria and Iraq, and Catholics in China
loyal to the Vatican have been subject to harassment and sometimes jail
over the last decades.
Christians in Saudi Arabia must worship out
of the public eye because the ultraconservative kingdom does not
officially permit churches and non-Muslim religious sites.
Francis,
the first pope from the Jesuit order, which is known for its missionary
zeal, praised the Colombian saint for "instilling hope" in the
indigenous people. He said she taught them in a way that "respected
their culture."
Many Catholic missionaries over the centuries have
been criticized for demanding natives renounce local traditions the
outsiders viewed as primitive.
The pope also hailed the Mexican
saint for renouncing a comfortable life to work with the sick and poor,
even kneeling on the bare floor of the hospital before the patients to
serve them with "tenderness and compassion."
Mother Lupita's
example, said Francis, should encourage people not to "get wrapped up in
themselves, their own problems, their own ideas, their own interests,
but to go out and meet those who need attention, comprehension, help"
and other assistance.
After shaking hands with the prelates and
VIPS in the front rows at the end of the Mass, Francis shed his
ceremonial vestments. Wearing a plain white cassock, he climbed into an
open white popemobile to ride up and down the security paths surrounding
the crowd of more than 60,000.
He stopped to pat children on the head, kiss babies and bantered in his native Spanish with some at the edge of the crowd.
Francis
noted that the crowd included participants in an anti-abortion march of
several thousand people, who walked a few kilometers (miles) from the
Colosseum, crossing a bridge over the Tiber river to end near the
Vatican while Mass was being celebrated in St. Peter's Square.
He
drew attention to a signature-gathering drive in many Italian churches
to push for a European initiative to "guarantee legal protection for
embryos, protecting every human being from the first instant of
existence."
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