(11 Oct 09 - RV) The Church has five new Saints. A French woman who dedicated her
life to care of the elderly and abandoned, a tireless Dominican preacher, a Trappist
Cistercian Oblate monk and mystic, a Polish bishop and defender of the faith and a
Belgian missionary who gave himself to the lepers on the margins of 19th
century society. Sunday was a day of celebration here at the Vatican, for these five
people, who in Pope Benedict XVI’s own words show us that in gifting ourselves totally
to Christ, in going against the trend we can reach perfection.
Thousands
converged on St Peters basilica for the ceremony, from Spain, Poland, Belgium and
Hawaii, the overspill filling St Peter’s Square waving their flags, holding aloft
their banners. They watched closely as, Archbishop Prefect of the Congregation for
the Causes of Saints, Angelo Amato read the names of those to be inscribed on the
role of saints.
They listened intently as Pope Benedict in his homily
delivered in various languages; telling us all that although their examples are
from a distant past their witness is still relevant today.
He spoke of
Oblate monk Rafael Arnaiz Baron, who died aged 27 after leaving a comfortable life
to follow Christ, and the French religious Mary of the Cross, engaged in assisting
the elderly who today, Benedict XVI recalled, "suffer multiple poverty and loneliness,
being sometimes even abandoned by their families".
But the greatest part
of his homily was given to the humble figure of a Belgian missionary priest who left
his home at 23, bound for the island of Molokai off the west coast of the great continent
of America. An island that during the 18th was a colony of lepers. He was Damiaan
Jozef de Veuster. Today he is Hawaii’s first saint.
“Not without
fear and loathing – said the Pope - he made the choice to go to the island of Molokai
in the service of lepers who were there, abandoned by all, so he exposed himself to
the disease from which they suffered. With them he felt at home. The servant of the
Word became a suffering servant, leper with the lepers, during the last four years
of his life”
Pope Benedict concluded “Their perfection, in the logic of
a faith sometimes humanly incomprehensible, subsides in their no longer focusing on
themselves, but in choosing to go against the trends of the time living according
to the Gospel”
Following mass the Pope made his way to the raised dias
before St Peter’s square for the midday angelus prayer. In comments in French and
English he asked for prayers to help guide the success of the ongoing Synod of Bishops
for Africa and then he a very special greeting for a particular group of pilgrims
all the way from the Land of the rising Sun: “I also greet the group of survivors
of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I pray that the world may never
again witness such mass destruction of innocent human life”.
Then as
the tapestries bearing the images of the newly proclaimed saints were unfurled in
the autumn breeze to adorn the façade of the basilica, Pope Benedict took his leave:
“May these new saints accompany you with their prayers and inspire you by the example
of their holy lives”