On October 20, 2024, Pope Francis presided over the canonization Mass of eleven martyrs murdered in Syria in the 19th century, as well as three founders of religious orders: a Canadian and an Italian nun, and an Italian priest. In his homily, the Pope stressed that Christians must serve without limits and without any desire for power.
Some 65 cardinals, 200 bishops, and 530 priests, seated in the Square, concelebrated the canonization Mass, the second this year. In February, the Pope declared the Argentinian Mama Antula (1730-1799) a saint, bringing to 912 the number of saints declared under Francis' pontificate.
Large portraits of the new saints were unfurled on the masterly façade of St. Peter's Basilica. The thousands of faithful gathered in the square could thus see the faces of the 11 “Martyrs of Damascus,” murdered in July 1860 in the Syrian capital by Druze; the Canadian nun Marie-Léonie Paradis (1840-1912), founder of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family; Italian missionary Giuseppe Allamano (1851-1926), founder of the Missionary Institute and the Missionary Sisters of the Consolata; and Italian nun Elena Guerra (1835-1914), founder of the Sisters of St. Zita, a congregation dedicated to the education of young girls.
“These new saints lived the style of Jesus”
At the start of the Mass, the Argentine pontiff pronounced the canonization formula in Latin and decreed that the names of the new saints be entered in the catalog of saints.
“These new saints have lived the style of Jesus: service,” he commented in his homily. “The faith and apostolate they exercised did not nourish in them worldly desires and cravings for power, but, on the contrary, made them servants of their brothers and sisters, creative in good, steadfast in difficulties, generous to the end."
Addressing a number of participants in the Synod currently underway at the Vatican, the Pope insisted on the notion of service, “the style of God who makes himself last so that the last may be elevated and become first.”
“Service is born of love, and love knows no limits, it doesn't make calculations, it spends and gives; it doesn't just produce to obtain results, it's not an occasional performance, it's born of the heart, a heart renewed by love and in love.”
As is now his custom, the Pope left it to a cardinal, this time Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, to celebrate Mass at the altar - with the soon-to-be 88-year-old pontiff next to him on a seat. Maronite Patriarch Béchara Boutros Raï, involved in the process of beatification of the Damascus martyrs, was also present at the altar, as was the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa.
Francis also mentioned the presence of the Ugandan vice-president, who had come to Rome to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the canonization of the Ugandan martyrs by Pope Paul VI.
