After the Angelus on Sunday, November 10, 2019, a new Blessed and a new Saint were applauded in St. Peter’s Square by Pope Francis and the crowd.
The Holy Father referred to the Beatification in Granada, Spain, on Saturday, November 9, of Maria Emilia Riquelme y Zayas (1847-1940), Founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Most Holy Sacrament and of Mary Immaculate.
He also mentioned the “Thanksgiving Mass” for the “equivalent Canonization of Saint Bartholomew Fernandes of the Martyrs” (1541-1590) this Sunday at Braga, Portugal, where he was Bishop.
“The new Blessed was exemplary for her fervor in Eucharistic Adoration and for her service to the destitute; while the new Saint was a great Evangelizer and Pastor of his people. We applaud them! — said Pope Francis.
“The ‘equivalent’ methodology is provided by the law of the Church,” the Pontiff himself explained in 2015. “It is used when a man or a woman have been Blessed for a very long time, and are venerated by the People of God, namely, they are, in fact, venerated as Saints: the process on a miracle isn’t carried out.”
“Equivalent” Canonizations are possible under three conditions:
- an already old cult;
- renown miracles wrought by the Saint;
- and their transmission in the course of the centuries by historians “worthy of faith.”
The Pope recalled that Angela of Foligno’s process “was carried out like this; she was the first” under his pontificate. ”Then I chose to Canonize persons who were great men evangelizers and great women evangelizers: first Peter Faber, who was an Evangelizer of Europe. It can be said that he died, at 40, on the road as he evangelized while traveling,” he added.
“And then there were Evangelizers of Canada, Francis of Laval and Mary of the Incarnation: both are practically <speaking> the Founders of the Church in that country, he as Bishop <and> she as Religious. And Joseph of Anchieta of Brazil, Founder of Sao Paulo . . . then Joseph Vaz, here, as Evangelizer of Sri Lanka,” continued the Pope.
“They are figures who carried out great evangelization and who are in harmony with the spirituality and the theology of the Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. That’s why I chose these figures,” he explained.
Translation by Virginia M. Forrester
