Pilgrims gather in St. Peter’s Square for a Mass and canonization of 14 new saints on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Vatican City, Mar 31, 2025 / 13:17 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis has advanced five people’s paths to sainthood after approving decrees promulgated by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints on March 28.
Blessed Peter To Rot of Papua New Guinea, Blessed Ignatius Shoukrallah Maloyan of Turkey, and Blessed María Carmen of Venezuela will be proclaimed saints of the Church.
The pope also approved the beatification of Italian diocesan priest Carmelo De Palma and declared Brazilian priest José Antônio de Maria Ibiapina a “venerable” of the Church.
The canonization ceremonies of both To Rot and Maloyan are to be discussed in a future customary consistory, according to a Holy See Press Office announcement.
To Rot, a lay catechist born on March 5, 1912, and martyred for his faith during World War II, will be the first canonized saint from Papua New Guinea.
Beatified by St. John Paul II during his apostolic journey to the Oceania nation on Jan. 17, 1995, To Rot is recognized by the Church as a defender of Christian marriage and a faithful catechist who continued his ministry until his death in prison.
Two children, one of them holding a statue of Blessed Peter To Rot, await the visit of Pope Francis at the Caritas Technical Secondary School in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Sept. 7, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Fame of To Rot’s sanctity spread throughout Papua New Guinea and to other countries in the Pacific Ocean — including the Solomon Islands and Australia — following his 1995 beatification.
Maloyan was born on April 19, 1869, and died a martyr in Turkey in 1915 after refusing to convert to Islam. He was beatified by St. John Paul II on Oct. 7, 2001, alongside six other servants of God.
Ordained in Lebanon in 1883, Maloyan was known as an intelligent and exemplary priest with a deep understanding of Scripture. He was later elected archbishop of Mardine during the Synod of Armenian Bishops held in Rome in 1911.
Following the great persecution of Armenians in the country with the outbreak of World War I, Maloyan alongside other priests and Christian faithful were executed by Turkish officers in June 1915 after refusing to convert to Islam.
Blessed María Carmen (née Carmen Elena Rendíles Martínez) will become the first canonized saint of Venezuela after the Holy Father approved the miracle — the healing of a woman diagnosed with idiopathic triventricular hydrocephalus — attributed to her intercession.
Born in the country’s capital, Caracas, on Aug. 11, 1903, she became a religious sister of the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus of the Blessed Sacrament in 1927 and later became one of the founders of the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus in Venezuela in 1946.
Serving the Catholic faithful in schools and parishes alongside her sisters who founded the new Latin American congregation, Blessed María Carmen was known for her love for Jesus in the Eucharist.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 2, 2023 / 05:15 am (CNA).
On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis said Jesus voluntarily took on the pain and abandonment of his Passion and Crucifixion so that he could be with us in whatever sorrow or difficulty we might be experiencing.
Jesus “experienced abandonment in order not to leave us prey to despair, in order to stay at our side forever,” the pope said during Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square April 2.
“He did this for me, for you,” he said, “because whenever you or I or anyone else seems pinned to the wall — and we have seen someone pinned to the wall — you see someone lost in a blind alley, plunged into the abyss of abandonment, sucked into a whirlwind of ‘whys’ without answer, there can still be some hope…”
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Pope Francis presided over the Palm Sunday Mass one day after being discharged from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.
The pope was admitted to the hospital for three days beginning March 29 for treatment for a bronchitis infection, the Vatican said.
An estimated 60,000 people were at the papal Mass, according to the Vatican Gendarmes.
In his homily, Francis spoke in a soft voice as he emphasized that whatever situation of abandonment we find ourselves in, Jesus is at our side.
The pope also said that we will find Jesus in those who are abandoned, recalling the death in November last year of a homeless man from Germany, who was found under the colonnade of St. Peter‘s Square.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Jesus “wants us to care for our brothers and sisters who resemble him most, those experiencing extreme suffering and solitude,” he said. “Today, brothers and sisters, there are entire peoples who are exploited and abandoned; the poor live on our streets and we look the other way, we turn around; there are migrants who are no longer faces but numbers; prisoners are disowned; people written off as problems.”
Pope Francis said these people are “Christs” for us: “People who are abandoned, invisible, hidden, discarded with white gloves,” such as the unborn, the isolated elderly, the forgotten sick, the abandoned disabled, and the lonely young.
“Jesus, in his abandonment, asks us to open our eyes and hearts to all who find themselves abandoned,” he said.
Pope Francis entered St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile April 2. He was driven to the central obelisk for the blessing of the palms and the proclamation of a reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew and the singing of Psalm 23.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
The blessing followed the procession of cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, and laypeople carrying palm fronds, olive branches, and the large weaved palms called “parmureli” to commemorate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Pope Francis has not led the procession since 2019.
For the start of Mass, the pope was again driven in the popemobile from the obelisk to the altar in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Palm Sunday, also called Passion Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week, which will lead in to the sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, and concludes with the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection beginning at the Easter Vigil.
On Palm Sunday, the Mass includes the reading of the Lord’s Passion from the Gospel of St. Matthew.
In his homily on April 2, Pope Francis focused on a line from the Gospel and repeated in the Psalm — Jesus’ cry of abandonment to the Father — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
“‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ In the Bible, the word ‘forsake’ is powerful,” the pope said.
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis’ Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
He noted how one might feel forsaken “at moments of extreme pain: love that fails, or is rejected or betrayed; children who are rejected and aborted; situations of repudiation, the lot of widows and orphans; broken marriages, forms of social exclusion, injustice and oppression; the solitude of sickness.”
“In a word, in the drastic severing of the bonds that unite us to others,” he said. “There [Jesus] tells us this word: abandonment. Christ brought all of this to the cross; upon his shoulders, he bore the sins of the world. And at the supreme moment, Jesus, the only begotten, beloved Son of the Father, experienced a situation utterly alien to his very being: the abandonment, the distance of God.”
“But, why did it have to come to this? For us. There is no other answer: Us,” Francis underlined. “He became one of us to the very end, in order to be completely and definitively one with us.”
At the end of his homily, Pope Francis remained in silence for over two and a half minutes before the singing of the Creed.
Jesus, the pope said, “has endured the distance of abandonment in order to take up into his love every possible distance that we can feel. So that each of us might say: in my failings — each of you has fallen many times — and I can say in my failings, in my desolation, whenever I feel betrayed or I have betrayed someone, when I feel cast aside or I have cast aside others, or when I feel forsaken or have forsaken others, we can think that Jesus was abandoned, betrayed, cast aside.”
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis’ Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
In our failures, we can remember that Jesus is at our side, Pope Francis said. “When I feel lost and confused, when I feel that I can’t go on, he is with me, he is there. In the thousand fits of ‘why…?’ and with many ‘whys’ unanswered, he is there.”
At the conclusion of Mass, Pope Francis led the Angelus, a traditional prayer honoring Mary.
In a brief message before the prayer, he invited Catholics to live Holy Week “as the tradition of God’s holy faithful people teaches us, that is, accompanying the Lord Jesus with faith and love.”
“Let us learn from our Mother, the Virgin Mary,” he said. “She followed her Son with the closeness of her heart; she was one soul with him and, although she did not understand everything, together with him she surrendered herself fully to the will of God the Father.”
“May Our Lady help us to be close to Jesus present in the suffering, discarded, abandoned people. May Our Lady take us by the hand to Jesus present in these people,” he said. “To all, happy journey toward Easter.”
From the popemobile, Pope Francis greeted those gathered in the square and in the adjoining thoroughfare after the Mass.
The full text of Pope Francis’ homily for Palm Sunday 2023 can be read here.
Cardinal Robert Prevost speaks to members of the media during a Synod on Synodality briefing on Oct. 23, 2024, at the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
Vatican City, Oct 24, 2024 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, prefect of … […]
Vatican City, Mar 23, 2021 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- The Vatican on Tuesday hosted a webinar on “advancing integral disarmament in times of pandemic,” with speakers from international organizations and video messages from representatives of the wo… […]
1 Comment
A few weeks back our beloved Pope was knocking on death’s door. And now he’s making choices for the next canonization? I almost think this is the Biden presidency where we had a president with dementia that nobody was admitting to while others are running the White House behind the scenes.
A few weeks back our beloved Pope was knocking on death’s door. And now he’s making choices for the next canonization? I almost think this is the Biden presidency where we had a president with dementia that nobody was admitting to while others are running the White House behind the scenes.