Vatican canonises 4 new saints

2006-07-01 18:12

Vatican City - Four people, including a 19th-century woman who founded a religious community in Indiana and a Mexican bishop whose body apparently did not decay after death, will be elevated to sainthood, said the Vatican on Saturday.

Pope Benedict XVI announced the October 15 canonisation of Mother Theodore Guerin, Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia and two others during a ceremony in the Apostolic Palace.

The ceremony centred on the reading of decrees approving sainthood for beatified faithful.

Guerin was a French nun who left her homeland in 1840 for the-then frontier state of Indiana, United States.

She founded St Mary-of-the Woods College near Terre Haute within a year of her arrival. She died in 1856 at the age of 57.

This year, the nun's order, the Sisters of Providence, said Benedict had approved a miracle - an employee at the order's mother house regained her eyesight - attributed to Guerin's intercession.

Guerin was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1998. One miracle is needed for beatification.

After beatification, another miracle is required to move forward on the path to canonisation.

Guizar Valencia, who also is being made a saint, was known in life for his piety and kindness to the poor,

He was born on April 26, 1878, and cared for the wounded and dying in Mexico's 1910-17 revolution.

Named bishop of Veracruz, he was driven out of his diocese and was forced to live in hiding in Mexico City.

His body was exhumed in 1950, 12 years after his death, and witnesses said it had not decayed.

Also being canonised are two Italians - Filippo Smaldone, founder of the Salesian order of nuns and known for his work with deaf-mutes, and Rosa Venerini (1656-1728), who founded a religious teaching community.

- AP