Mission Accomplished: Pope to Declare 14 New Saints

by CNS · October 16, 2024

The 11 “martyrs of Damascus” – eight Franciscan friars and three laymen, blood brothers – who were scheduled to be canonised on Oct. 20, 2024, are depicted in a painting. The 11 were martyred in Damascus, Syria, in 1860. (CNS photo/courtesy of OFM.org)

By Cindy Wooden, CNS – The celebration of World Mission Sunday is a popular day for a pope to canonise new saints – not only those who ministered or gave up their lives in lands traditionally known as mission territories, but women and men from every walk of life and from around the world.

The 2024 celebration of World Mission Sunday, Oct. 20 will be no different. Pope Francis is scheduled to declare saints: Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, founder of the Consolata Missionaries; eight Franciscan friars and three Maronite laymen who were martyred in Syria in 1860; Canada-born Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis, founder of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family; and Blessed Elena Guerra, an Italian nun who founded the Oblates of the Holy Spirit.

Here are short biographies of the new saints:

— Blessed Allamano, an Italian who lived from 1851 to 1926, was the nephew of St. Giuseppe Cafasso and had as his spiritual director for four years St John Bosco, founder of the Salesians. He founded the Men’s Institute of Consolata Missionaries in 1901 and the women’s branch of the order in 1910.

Ordained to the priesthood in 1873 for the Archdiocese of Turin, he worked in a parish for a few months before being called to join the staff of the diocesan seminary. At the age of only 25, he was named spiritual director of the seminarians. Later, as rector of Turin’s Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation, he gathered Turin priests willing to be missionaries, forming an institute named after the shrine. The first group of priests set off for Kenya in 1902.

— Blessed Manuel Ruiz López, six other Franciscans from Spain and one from Austria as well as three Maronite laymen, blood brothers — Abdel Moati, Francis and Raphael Massabki — were murdered in St Paul’s Church and convent in Damascus, Syria, the night between July 9 and 10, 1860, by Druze militants.

Father Ruiz was superior of the convent and, according to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, after the militants broke in, “his first thought was to go to the church and consume the Eucharistic hosts to prevent them from being profaned. He was put to death at the foot of the altar.”

The other Franciscan friars being canonised are: Carmelo Bolta Bañuls, Engelbert Kolland, Nicanor Ascanio Soria, Nicolás María Alberca Torres, Pedro Nolasco Soler Méndez, Francisco Pinazo Peñalver and Juan Jacob Fernández.

The Massabki brothers lived in Damascus and frequently assisted the Franciscan friars. Abdel Moati was married with five children and helped out at the friars’ school. Francis was a silk merchant who also was married and was the father of eight children. Raphael was single and was known to spend long hours praying in the church.

— Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis was born Virginie-Alodie Paradis in L’Acadie, Quebec, in 1840. The future saint entered the convent of the Marianites of Holy Cross, a congregation of women dedicated to assisting priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross both through teaching and by cooking and cleaning for the priests. Given the religious name Marie de Sainte-Léonie, she had various teaching assignments in Canada before being sent to teach at St. Vincent’s orphanage in New York.

In 1880 in Memramcook, New Brunswick, she founded a new community, the Institute of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, to support the ministry of priests. With 91 sisters, the community was approved in 1896 in Sherbrooke, Québec. The sisters’ website describes their mission as “the spiritual and material support of the ministry of priests.” Mother Marie-Léonie died in 1912 in Sherbrooke at the age of 72.

— Blessed Elena Guerra was born in Lucca, Italy, in 1835 and was drawn to Christian service, initially founding a school for poor girls in her hometown. But, according to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, she had had “a very special devotion to the Holy Spirit” since receiving the sacrament of confirmation at the age of 8. Eventually, in 1882, she founded the community that would become the Oblates of the Holy Spirit.

Later, “saddened to find that most Christians neglected devotion to the Paraclete,” the website said, she wrote a pamphlet called “Pious Union of Prayers to the Holy Spirit” to spread devotion to the Spirit, especially in the days leading up to Pentecost.

She died in 1914 and was beatified in 1959 by St John XXIII.