During an audience granted on January 27, 2025, to Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Pope Francis authorized the publication of decrees paving the way for one canonization and two beatifications. Three decrees recognizing heroic virtues have also been published.
A Swiss martyr in Spain
One decree establishes recognition of the martyrdom of the Servant of God Lycarion May (born François-Benjamin), a brother of the Society of the Marist Brothers of the Schools. He was born in Bagnes (Switzerland) on July 21, 1870, and killed in hatred of the faith on July 27, 1909, in Barcelona, Spain. The formal recognition of his martyrdom paves the way for his beatification.
A native of the canton of Vaud, François-Benjamin May entered the novitiate of the Society of Marist Brothers — also known as the Society of Little Brothers of Mary — in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, Drôme, in 1888. The following year, aged just 19, he moved to Spain, where he devoted himself to teaching for 20 years. Taking the religious name of “Brother Lycarion,” he founded two schools, in Arceniega and Pueblo Nuevo.
As principal of the latter school for three years, in the middle of a Catalonia tormented by anarchist agitation, he oversaw the schooling of many working-class children. But on July 26, 1909, a riot — initially directed against the call-up of reservists sent to Melilla as part of the Moroccan war — spread throughout Barcelona. Violent gangs, considering the Catholic Church an ally of King Alfonso XIII, targeted Catholic churches, convents and schools. Some 50 religious establishments and 18 places of worship fell prey to the flames.
Barcelona's "Tragic Week" riot
This “Tragic Week” claimed the lives of over 100 people, including several members of the clergy and religious communities. On the morning of July 27, a rioter who claimed to be protecting them asked Brother Lycarion and his brothers to step outside the convent in their religious garb, as an aggressive crowd had gathered in front of the establishment. Brother Lycarion was mortally wounded by several bullets, but the other brothers managed to escape thanks to the protection of the Red Cross. Their entire establishment was set on fire.
This episode of violence, relatively forgotten today, was overshadowed by the Spanish Civil War, which devastated the whole country some 30 years later, between 1936 and 1939, and claimed many victims within the Catholic Church. Numerous beatifications linked to the Spanish Civil War have been celebrated in the country in recent years.
Miracle recognized for the canonization of a Sister of Mercy of Verona
A decree also recognizes the miracle attributed to Blessed Vincenza Maria Poloni (1802-1855), co-founder of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy with the German priest Charles Steeb (1773-1865). This religious sister, who lived most of her life in the dynamic Catholic environment of Verona — then under Austro-Hungarian domination — founded this congregation in 1848. It’s dedicated to helping the poor and is inspired by the spirituality of St. Vincent de Paul.
Vincenza Maria Poloni, who died at the age of 53 in 1855, was the subject of a beatification process that began in 1990, and was beatified in Verona in 2008. The miracle attributed to her concerns the miraculous healing of a Chilean woman who had suffered a serious aortic lesion, for which she underwent major surgery in 2013. Although her prognosis was life-threatening, she recovered after her nephew invoked the Italian nun's intercession for her cure. He knew of her because a house of her congregation was present in the Chilean town of Quilleco. Recognition of this miracle paves the way for her forthcoming canonization.
The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, whose general house is still in Verona, has spread to several European countries (Italy, Portugal, Albania, Germany) as well as to Latin America and Africa. It currently numbers some 570 nuns in 63 communities.
Spanish martyrs in Georgia, USA
Another decree recognizes the martyrdom of the Servants of God Pietro da Corpa and his four companions. These Spanish Franciscan religious were killed in odium Fidei (in hatred of the faith) in September 1597 in a locality in what is now the state of Georgia, USA. They were murdered by members of the Guales tribe, who refused to accept their teaching on monogamy. Specifically, the grandson of the village chief, although baptized Catholic, refused to renounce polygamy and decided to eliminate the missionaries. These Franciscans will soon be beatified.
Heroic virtues recognized of an English religious and an Italian hermit
The decrees further recognize the heroic virtues of three personalities, making them eligible for the title of “Venerable.” The verification of a miracle attributed to their intercession will be necessary for their eventual beatification.
The British religious sister Maria Ricciarda Beauchamp Hambrough (née Catherine) was born in London in 1887 and died in Rome in 1966. She was the first Abbess General of the Brigittines from 1958 to 1964, after the death of the congregation's founder, St. Elisabeth Hesselblad, with whom she lived from 1914 until the latter's death.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the Englishwoman actively contributed to the establishment of this community in Sweden. At the time, that country was slowly opening up to the return of a Catholic presence after centuries of Protestant hegemony.
The Italian priest Quintino Sicuro, born in 1920 in Puglia, southern Italy, was a hermit with a very unique background. A member of the Resistance during the Second World War, this sub-brigadier of the Guardia di Finanza managed to escape Nazi and Fascist surveillance by disguising himself as a priest and fleeing by bicycle. After a broken engagement and an attempt at religious life in a Franciscan community, he actually became a priest a few years later, in 1959. He received ordination for the diocese of Cesena and Sarsina, in Emilia-Romagna.
By ordaining him a priest, even though he never worked in a parish, the bishop of Cesena gave a canonical framework to the hermit's activity. Indeed, Sicuro had lived in the Apennines since 1949 in conditions of absolute deprivation, sleeping on stones and eating herbs. This atypical consecrated soul died on December 26, 1968, struck down by a heart attack on the path of Mount Fumaiolo in Verghereto, according to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
An Italian laywoman who was a mystic and visionary
Another Italian, Luigia Sinapi (1916-1978), was a mystic and visionary known for having experienced apparitions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, as well as of spiritual figures such as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Philip Neri. This woman, who miraculously recovered from a tumor in 1935, was very close to both Padre Pio and Pope Pius XII, assuring the latter of the Virgin Mary's support when he proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption in 1950. She led an otherwise ordinary, unassuming life, working as a cashier and civil servant at the National Institute of Statistics.
