(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 06.13.2025).- In one of his first major acts following the death of Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV has formally set the dates for a series of canonizations that promise to resonate deeply with Catholics across continents and generations. In a solemn gathering on June 13 in the Vatican’s Consistory Hall, he presided over the Hour of Terce and a Public Ordinary Consistory, issuing decrees that will inscribe nine blesseds into the official register of saints.
Among them are two names that have captured spiritual hunger of today’s youth: Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis. Their joint canonization is now set for Sunday, September 7, 2025.
Carlo Acutis, the 15-year-old Italian tech-savvy teen who created a website cataloging Eucharistic miracles before his death in 2006, was beatified in Assisi in 2020. He has quickly become an icon of “ordinary sanctity,” fusing deep devotion with contemporary life. Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died at 24 in 1925, was known for his vibrant faith, social activism, and love of the poor. For decades he has been a quiet patron of students and young Catholics seeking meaning beyond materialism.
Originally, these two canonizations had been scheduled separately: Acutis on April 27, Divine Mercy Sunday, as part of the Jubilee of Adolescents; and Frassati during the Jubilee of Youth in late July. However, both were postponed after the passing of Pope Francis on April 21. Their now unified canonization in September offers a powerful symbolic restart—two youthful saints celebrated together, bridging the digital age and early 20th-century witness.
But the September ceremony is only one chapter in a wider narrative. Pope Leo XIV also announced that on October 19, 2025, seven more blesseds will be elevated to sainthood. This diverse group includes martyrs, missionaries, founders, and laypeople—saints whose lives stretch across cultures, continents, and centuries.
Among them is Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, the Armenian Catholic Archbishop of Mardin, who was martyred during the Armenian genocide of 1915. Alongside him will be Peter To Rot, a catechist martyred in Papua New Guinea in 1945 for defying a ban on Christian ministry under Japanese occupation. His canonization marks a historic first for his country.
The new saints will also include Vincenza Maria Poloni, who established the Sisters of Mercy of Verona in the 19th century; María del Monte Carmelo Rendiles Martínez, founder of the Servants of Jesus in Venezuela; and Maria Troncatti, a Salesian sister who dedicated her life to missionary service among Indigenous communities in Ecuador.
Two lay figures round out the list: José Gregorio Hernández, known in Venezuela and beyond as “the doctor of the poor,” whose compassion and service made him a national folk hero; and Bartolo Longo, a once-agnostic lawyer who experienced a dramatic conversion and became the founder of the now-renowned Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompeii.
Together, these canonizations sketch a mosaic of modern sanctity: youthful, missionary, lay, priestly, martyred, and merciful. Pope Leo XIV, still in the earliest months of his pontificate, is not only honoring the plans of his predecessor but also subtly pointing toward his own priorities.
The dual events in September and October will likely draw vast crowds to Rome, especially within the already vibrant context of the 2025 Jubilee Year. But beyond the logistics and liturgies, these canonizations promise to serve a deeper purpose: reaffirming that holiness is not a relic of the past, but a living, breathing call available to all.
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