VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV canonized Venezuela’s beloved “physician of the poor” Sunday earlier than tens of hundreds of individuals, providing the South American nation its first saint and a cause to have a good time amid a yearslong financial disaster and new tensions with the US.
José Gregorio Hernández, revered by hundreds of thousands for his dedication to poor folks, was declared a saint alongside Mom Carmen Rendiles Martínez, the founding father of a Venezuelan spiritual order, at a Mass in St. Peter’s Sq. that Leo known as a “nice celebration of holiness.”
Hundreds of jubilant Venezuelans stuffed the sq. and draped Venezuelan flags on its police barricades, including splashes of pink, blue and yellow that completely matched the uniforms of the attending Swiss Guards. Hundreds extra who could not journey to Rome marked the event in Caracas, the place the Vatican service was livestreamed earlier than daybreak at a downtown plaza.
The Mass, which the Vatican mentioned drew some 70,000 folks, additionally gave Papua New Guinea its first saint: Peter To Rot, a layman killed in jail in 1945 for standing up for monogamous marriage at a time when polygamy was practiced. In all, seven folks have been canonized in a ceremony that Pope Francis put in movement in a few of his closing acts as pope.
In truth, Francis authorised Hernández’s canonization from his hospital room on Feb. 24, agreeing to bypass the Vatican’s typical miracle affirmation course of to pronounce him a saint primarily based on the “widespread veneration of the ‘doctor-saint’ among the many trustworthy,” the Vatican mentioned.
Hernández is beloved amongst Venezuelans, along with his face plastered on road artwork round Caracas, in portraits in hospitals and in photographs gracing particular person dwelling altars.
As a health care provider in Caracas in the course of the late 1800s and early 1900s, he refused to take cash from poor folks for his companies and infrequently gave them cash for medication, incomes the nickname “physician of the poor.” He was killed in 1919 whereas crossing a road shortly after choosing up some medication at a pharmacy to deliver to a poor aged lady.
He grew to become a spiritual icon after his dying, and when Pope John Paul II visited Venezuela in 1996, he acquired a petition signed by 5 million folks — nearly one in 4 Venezuelans — asking that he declare Hernández a saint.
“For them, that is certainly a nationwide occasion of the best order,” mentioned Silvia Correale, who spearheaded his sainthood case. “Definitely, the canonization of José Gregorio is desired by all of the Venezuelan folks, and has been waited for by all of the folks.”
Josè Ramon Malavecontreras, a Venezuelan resident in Rome, mentioned his mom named him after Hernández and attended his canonization Sunday.
“They believed I’d be stillborn, so she devoted his identify to me for saving my life,” he mentioned Sunday. “Subsequently, this second was unmissable for me. I couldn’t fail to be right here.”
In Caracas, Arquímides Blanco, 60, mentioned he wasn’t a selected fan of Hernández however acknowledged the importance of his canonization for Venezuela now. Blanco belongs to a cultural collective commissioned to color the streets surrounding Caracas’ emblematic parish of La Pastora forward of the canonization.
“I will not be an enormous fan of José Gregorio as such, however I perceive that he’s Venezuelan and that his canonization within the context of the entire geopolitical state of affairs is vital,” he mentioned.
The canonization was a long-awaited celebration and a lift for Venezuela, simply weeks after Venezuelan opposition chief María Corina Machado gained the Nobel Peace Prize. It comes as tensions mount with the US over Washington’s use of army pressure in opposition to suspected drug cartels.
Simply this previous week, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that he licensed the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and mentioned he was weighing the execution of land operations within the South American nation.
Venezuela’s financial system has been in disaster for the previous decade, compounded by U.S. sanctions and spurring the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, first to different South American nations after which, in more moderen years, to the US.
The federal government of President Nicólas Maduro – sworn in final yr regardless of credible proof he misplaced reelection — has been pressured to chop subsidies, making many day by day requirements unaffordable to the 80% of residents estimated to reside in poverty.
In his homily, Leo held up all seven new saints as fashions for as we speak’s Catholics who carried “the lamp of the religion.”
“Could their intercession help us in our trials and their instance encourage us in our shared vocation to holiness,” he mentioned.
Additionally canonized Sunday have been Archbishop Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, an Armenian Catholic who was killed for refusing to resign his religion throughout what the Vatican has mentioned was the Ottoman period genocide of Armenians; Sister Vincenza Maria Poloni, a nineteenth century founding father of a spiritual order; Sister Maria Troncatti, an Italian missionary in Ecuador, and Bartolo Longo, who like Hernandez was canonized primarily based on widespread veneration among the many trustworthy, not a purported miraculous therapeutic.
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Arraez reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Related Press visible journalists Luigi Navarra, Silvia Stellacci and Maria Selene Clemente in Vatican Metropolis contributed to this report.
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Related Press faith protection receives help by means of the AP’s collaboration with The Dialog US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely liable for this content material.
