(OSV News) — The Mexican bishops’ conference has condemned the murder of a mayor, who was assassinated after pleading for federal assistance in combating drug cartels — which extort avocado growers in his municipality in western Michoacán state.

Carlos Manzo, the mayor of Uruapan, was shot dead at a candlelighting ceremony for Day of the Dead on Nov. 1. Manzo was shot seven times, according to Mexico’s public security secretary, Omar García Harfuch, while photos from the event in the town square showed him holding his young son in his arms. Two suspects were arrested in the case, García Harfuch added.

Manzo’s slaying “adds to a series of murders of people who have dared to speak out and confront the absence of the rule of law in their communities, businesses and other spaces. Today, it is no longer enough to apprehend the killer: We must resolutely combat the root causes of all these murders,” the bishops’ conference said in a Nov. 2 statement.

“The ordinary presence of armed groups, which control the public life of citizens in various regions of the country, is the real crime to be faced: the roadblocks, the dispossession of lands, the constant threats to producers, merchants and rulers reflect a serious weakening of the constitutional order that the governments at the municipal, state and federal levels, are obligated to guarantee.”

The brazen murder sparked outrage in Mexico, where drug cartel violence has plagued swaths of the country for nearly two decades. The violence has especially plagued Michoacán, which has a long history of marijuana growing. But analysts say that now criminal groups now extort the growers of avocados and limes, illegally log forests and import chemical precursors for synthetic drugs through the port of Lázaro Cárdenas.

A priest in Michoacán described a desperate situation in the state with criminal groups colluding with politicians and fighting each other to control lucrative crime territories.

“The people are saying, ‘Enough, padre,” the priest, who ministers in a conflictive part of Michoacán, told OSV News. The priest, who previously lent spiritual support to self-defense groups that formed to fight drug cartels in 2013, asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “Believe me: We’re just a minute, a moment away from Michoacán burning,” the priest said.

Manzo became known for accompanying police as they patrolled Uruapan. He spoke out against organized crime and urged President Claudia Sheinbaum to take action.

“This country has already slipped out of the president’s control,” Manzo told Mexican media outlet Latinus. “The country is slipping away from us. Crime has become part of the landscape. … We are facing crime alone. There is no strategy, there is no state.”

Confronting criminal groups can be perilous. Bernardo Bravo, head of a citrus growers’ association in the city of Apatzingán, was recently found murdered after he organized a protest by citrus growers tired of paying extortion.

“These crimes wound Mexican society and demand an immediate and coordinated response from the authorities to rebuild peace in Michoacán,” said a Nov. 2 statement from the National Dialogue for Peace, an initiative to pacify Mexico, sponsored by the bishops’ conference, the Jesuits and the Conference of Religious Superiors of Mexico.

Sheinbaum condemned the killing of Manzo, who previously served in Congress as a member of her ruling Morena party and won the mayor’s office as an independent. She drew controversy on Nov. 3, however, for saying at her morning press conference that violence in Michoacán originated with former President Felipe Calderón — who she insisted stole the 2006 election and started cracking down on drug cartels in Michoacán to “legitimize” his win.

“And we have always said it is about addressing the causes and zero impunity, intelligence, investigation and prosecutions,” Sheinbaum said.

Calderón’s crackdown on drug cartels shortly followed his taking office in December 2006. It was preceded by a drug cartel known as La Familia Michoacana bursting into a bar in Uruapan and tossing five human heads onto a dance floor.

Manzo’s murder captured international attention and came as U.S. pressure on Mexico to stop the flow of drugs like fentanyl has mounted.

“The U.S. stands ready to deepen security cooperation with Mexico to wipe out organized crime on both sides of the border,” Christopher Landau, deputy secretary of state, said on X. “May his soul rest in peace and may his memory inspire prompt and effective action.”

(David Agren writes for OSV News from Buenos Aires.)

By Michelle Jones

(OSV News) – We radiate the life of Jesus to the world to the extent that we live with the conviction that we are divinely loved. Advent calls us beyond the false security of the merely virtuous person and into the daring surrender to God’s love of the saint.

But our feelings and the circumstances of our lives and the world around us so often make it difficult for us to be rooted and grounded in the love of God. Thankfully, what the Advent season calls us to, it also makes possible. These weeks are fertile ground for cultivating trust in the truth that no matter how things may seem to us, we are intimately and tenderly loved by God. And in living this conviction, we may ever more radiantly learn to bear Christ to others.

As we contemplate Advent themes in this spirit, we welcome into our company four radiant women, all doctors of the church, who put all their hope in God’s love: Thérèse of Lisieux, Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena.

– Thérèse of Lisieux on consistency

It is natural for us to live by the changing weather patterns of our emotions. One day, we are anxious about finances or deadlines or the results of health tests, so we withdraw into a cocoon or snap at those around us. The next day, we are feeling in control of life and rather successful at being human, so we beam joviality and peace upon the world.

Advent stirs us from the slumber of following our feelings and urges us to “stay awake” to what faith demands of us (Mk 13:33-37).

As important and compelling as our emotions are, faith calls us not to be absorbed in them or to identify with them. Rather, we are to dive beneath their variability and deliberately to live ever alert to the truth that God’s love is holding us in being, moment by moment. Our fears or moods may remain, but as we consistently choose to live by faith, to live awake to the reality that we are unstintingly and passionately loved, we will be for others the living presence of God.

A particular genius of St. Thérèse of Lisieux was to live in constant trusting vigilance to God’s love for her and thus to be an unwavering beacon of divine goodness. The sweetness of Thérèse’s writing style perhaps makes it easy to miss her tenacious refusal to conform herself to the contours of her changing emotions. However, this consistent decision to be attentive and receptive to the flood of God’s love is unmistakable in Thérèse’s response to the trial of faith that blanketed the last 18 months of her life.

After first describing to her prioress her experience of a relentless “night of nothingness” in which “everything has disappeared,” Thérèse goes on to articulate her stance of steadfast trust. She writes: “My dear Mother, I may perhaps appear to you to be exaggerating my trial. In fact, if you are judging according to the sentiments I express in my little poems composed this year, I must appear to you as a soul filled with consolations and one for whom the veil of faith is almost torn aside; and yet it is no longer a veil for me, it is a wall which reaches right up to the heavens and covers the starry firmament. When I sing of the happiness of heaven and of the eternal possession of God, I feel no joy in this, for I sing simply what I want to believe.”

For at least one day this week, try to live in the spirit of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, acting not according to your changing feelings, but rather according to what you want to believe.

– St. Hildegard of Bingen on transformation

How can we possibly live as Advent stirs us to live? The messiness and anxieties of our everyday lives frequently exert an all-consuming claim over us. Within the grip of life’s contingency, not to mention its banality, how can we live in the security of being divinely loved and so be for others the presence of the living God? Is it simply a matter of dogged spiritual will-power?

John the Baptist promises that Jesus “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mk 1:1-8). The Holy Spirit enables us to enter into and live by the life of Jesus. This means that every decision we make to live in the truth that we are loved by God, while certainly our own decision, is mysteriously enabled; it is a sharing in Jesus’ trusting “yes” to live as the beloved Son of God.

At every moment, no matter our internal or external circumstances, the Holy Spirit is holding us in the flow of Trinitarian love; we simply have to choose to participate.

The writings of St. Hildegard of Bingen crackle with a living awareness of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. For Hildegard, the Holy Spirit is the source of “viriditas,” or greenness — that vitality, freshness, dynamism which makes all life, both physical and spiritual, alive.

We glimpse Hildegard’s perception of what it means to be baptized with the Holy Spirit in the closing lines of a letter she wrote to a friend: “May He anoint you with the viridity of the Holy Spirit, and may He work good and holy works in you through that devotion with which true worshipers worship God.” The strength to live confidently as loved sons and daughters of God is not something we muster from our own interior resources. It is what, with our cooperation, the Holy Spirit causes to spring up within us.

We again hear Hildegard portraying the Holy Spirit’s power to make the divine life take root within us in her “Antiphon to the Holy Spirit.” Ringing out across the centuries and greening our Advent journey with healing and hope, she sings:

“The Spirit of God / is a life that bestows life, / root of world-tree / and the wind in its boughs. / Scrubbing out sin, / she rubs oil into wounds. / She is glistening life / alluring all praise, / all-awakening, / all-resurrecting.”

Take some time this week to notice the creation around you. Seek out any surprising signs of life and hopefulness amongst that which seems dormant and barren. Ask the Holy Spirit to stir such surprising vitality in the dormant and barren areas of your interior life, bringing about new vigor, joy and commitment.

– St. Teresa of Avila on encounter

It is perhaps easy for committed Catholics to gloss over the description of Jesus in the first chapter of John as one we “do not recognize.” We know him! We go to Mass every Sunday; we grasp the gist of the Gospels. But Advent challenges us to confront the comfortable presumption that we know the Lord and beckons us to deepen our personal relationship with him.

After all, our decision to cooperate with the divine enablement of the Spirit and to live radiant with the steadfast conviction that we are beloved by God is all about growing in our living union with Jesus. We are invited in the Advent season to expose our minds and hearts anew — or maybe even for the first time — to the ecstasy of self-giving love, the torrent of utterly attentive affection, incarnate and accessible to us in the person of Jesus.

The Christian spiritual tradition teaches that praying with the Gospels is a singularly effective way of coming to know Jesus more intimately. St. Teresa of Avila has precious wisdom to offer us in this regard. For Teresa, the Gospels are a fruitful context for focusing our attention on Jesus and speaking with him in faith.

She gives us a beautiful demonstration of doing just this when she contemplates keeping Jesus company in the Garden of Gethsemane. She had been writing to her sisters about prayer, but she spontaneously bursts into prayer: “O Lord of the world, my true Spouse! … Are You so in need, my Lord and my Love, that You would want to receive such poor company as mine, for I see by your expression that you have been consoled by me?”

Teresa makes the stunning claim here that we can console the Lord in his sufferings. When she teaches us about encountering Jesus in the Gospels, she is not merely suggesting some imaginative exercise or reconstructing in our minds a historical scene. She is talking about encountering a living person.

Teresa is alive to the truth that the Gospel episodes are not over and done with, irretrievably in the past. The Jesus who lived then, lives now and all his earthly life is alive in him; the way he was for the people he encountered in the past is the way he is now for us. So, we can, in fact, be the person touching his cloak, or asking him for mercy, or pleading for living water or consoling him. The episodes of the Gospels truly are pathways to deepening our knowledge of the living Jesus.

– St. Catherine of Siena on Christian identity

Was Mary’s personal identity eradicated at the Annunciation (Lk 1:26-38)? Did her generous, “I am the handmaid of the Lord” signal the end of her own life story as she began her life as the God-bearer? On the contrary, with her “yes” to the unfolding of God’s plan, Mary leaned more fully into her unique selfhood. Her witness prompts us to step back and discern the same flourishing at work in our own lives — or at least potentially so.

Throughout Advent we have prayed that our lives may more and more bear the radiant glory of God to others. We radiate God’s presence inasmuch as we live from the truth that God loves us; this means coming to know more intimately the God revealed in Jesus, cooperating with the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, and surrendering unreservedly to that love which sustains us in being through thick and thin. To be alive with the divine life means the blossoming of our deepest identity. We become light to the world and more fully ourselves as we let ourselves be loved.

St. Catherine of Siena had a vivid insight into the reality that our true self flourishes as we grow in union with God. Her prayer “My Nature is Fire” takes our self-understanding to audacious new depths and profoundly enriches our sense of what our life in Christ offers others.

The prayer reads: “In your nature, eternal Godhead, I shall come to know my nature. And what is my nature, boundless love?

“It is fire, because you are nothing but a fire of love. And you have given humankind a share in this nature, for by the fire of love you created us. And so with all other people and every created thing; you made them out of love. O ungrateful people! What nature has your God given you? His very own nature! Are you not ashamed to cut yourself off from such a noble thing through the guilt of deadly sin? O eternal Trinity, my sweet love! You, light, give us light. You, wisdom, give us wisdom. You, supreme strength, strengthen us. Today, eternal God, let our cloud be dissipated so that we may perfectly know and follow your Truth in truth, with a free and simple heart. God, come to our assistance! Lord, make haste to help us! Amen.”

Advent both reminds us of our transcendent calling and nurtures its fulfillment within us. Throughout this sacred season, we are created into beacons of divine tenderness as the Holy Spirit shapes our lives into Jesus’ “yes” to the Father’s love.

This Advent, guided by the wisdom of the women doctors of the church, let us throw our hearts open to God’s transforming work of love as never before. Our world needs us to do nothing less.

(Michelle Jones writes from Australia.)

By David Agren , OSV News

(OSV News) — Many parishioners at San Antonio de las Huertas Parish in Mexico City remember their deceased loved ones by building altars in their homes for Day of the Dead.

The altars burst with marigolds, are often adorned with colourful “papel picado,” or decorative cut paper, and usually feature food and drink, including Coca-Cola, tequila and beer. People believe their relatives return the nights of Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 to reunite with family.

Father Pedro Lira, pastor at San Antonio de las Huertas, supports the practice of building altars. But he also encourages his congregation to pray for their deceased loved ones and to remember the promise of eternal life.

“Upon lighting the candles many people stop and pray the Our Father without really knowing how to pray at the altar,” Father Lira told OSV News. “It’s the confidence of saying, ‘Even after death, I can do something for you?'”

Day of the Dead — famed Dia de los Muertos — marks one of Mexico’s deepest cultural traditions, dating to pre-Hispanic times, in which people commemorate and commune with their deceased loved ones. Mexicans build altars and visit graveyards for candlelight vigils.

Many Mexicans visit churches, too, where prayers are said for All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1 and All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2.

“The church commemorates, does not celebrate, the faithful who have departed,” Father Lira said. “We entrust them to God’s mercy. We no longer know if they share in his glory, but we do entrust them to God’s providence. And that is why as a church we pray for them.”

Death holds a unique place in Mexican culture. Pre-Hispanic populations celebrated a version of Day of the Dead around harvest time, according to research. Early Catholic evangelists “Christianized” that remembrance of the dead, according to Father Lira, who emphasized, “The Christian message is death as a passage to eternal life. … Mexican culture did not see life after death.”

The tradition has become a spectacle, too — all thanks to the 2015 James Bond movie, “Spectre,” which featured an apocryphal Day of the Dead parade. Mexican tourism officials copied the parade — complete with giant skeleton marionettes — which draws throngs to central Mexico City.

Onlookers paint their faces black and white and dress in La Catrina costumes — elegant skeletons previously used to mock the Mexicans aspiring to be Europeans. Tourists, meanwhile, increasingly make trips to graveyards to witness the festivities, bringing much needed economic activity to downtrodden rural towns, but disrupting commemorations.

“The people of Oaxaca (state) have managed to create a second Day of the Dead that is exclusively meant for tourists and strangers,” Shawn Haley, a Canadian anthropologist studying the holiday, told OSV News. The alternative Day of the Dead “redirects the strangers focus away from the village celebrations that can then remain restricted to the community and family.”

Observers say a renewed sense of pride in Mexican traditions, along with movies such as “Coco,” have hastened the embrace of Day of the Dead. The renewed interest in Day of the Dead, meanwhile, has largely diminished interest in Halloween, which had been brought back by migrants and had been gaining ground until recently. “It is viewed as a quaint American holiday,” Haley said.

Mexican church leaders have long warned of the rise of Halloween. Father Andrés Larios said a group of young people in his parish in Michoacán even tried to turn the parish event hall into a haunted house — something he used as a teaching opportunity.

“The church much prefers promoting that one day we will meet our loved ones who died for this world, but who continue living in the other, rather than getting rid of all these things that come from the United States” such as Halloween, said Andrés Larios, a parish priest in the Diocese of Apatzingán.

Practicing Catholics still refer to Day of the Dead as All Saints, which remembers the saints, and All Souls, which remembers all believers, to “distinguish themselves from nonpracticing Catholics,” according to Haley, though “the actual celebration is exactly the same.”

He added, “In non-Catholic homes, the deceased loved ones are expected to return home where in Catholic homes, the altar becomes more of a memorial to the deceased. Less celebrating and more remembering.”

Priests are emphasizing faith, along with remembrance.

“It’s very important to recall the importance of praying for the saints on Nov. 1 and praying for the dead on Nov. 2,” Father Alan Camargo, spokesman for the Diocese of Matamoros-Reynosa, told OSV News.

“The Catholic faith, at its core, is Christ who dies and conquers death,” he continued, adding that “altars to the dead, skulls, those don’t clash with the Christian faith as long as we discover the importance of respect for life and also respect for death.”

(David Agren writes for OSV News from Buenos Aires.)

By David Agren

(OSV News) — Muchos feligreses de la parroquia de San Antonio de las Huertas, en la Ciudad de México, recuerdan a sus seres queridos fallecidos construyendo altares en sus hogares para el Día de Muertos.

Los altares están repletos de flores (mayormente la flor de cempasúchil), a menudo adornados con colorido papel picado y suelen incluir comida y bebida, como Coca-Cola, tequila y cerveza. Mucha gente cree que sus familiares regresan las noches del 1 y 2 de noviembre para reunirse con la familia.

El padre Pedro Lira, párroco de San Antonio de las Huertas, apoya la práctica de construir altares. Pero también anima a sus feligreses a rezar por sus seres queridos fallecidos y a recordar la promesa de la vida eterna.

“Al encender las velas mucha gente se detiene, reza un Padre nuestro sin tener mucha idea de lo que de lo que se tiene que hacer como rezo en el altar”, explicó el padre Lira a OSV News. “Es la confianza de decir: ‘¿Aun después de la muerte, yo puedo hacer algo por ti?’”.

El famoso Día de los Muertos marca una de las tradiciones culturales más profundas de México, que se remonta a la época prehispánica, en la que la gente conmemora y se comunica con sus seres queridos fallecidos. El pueblo de México construye altares y visita los cementerios llevando velas.

Muchos mexicanos también visitan las iglesias, donde se rezan oraciones por el Día de Todos los Santos el 1 de noviembre y el Día de los Fieles Difuntos el 2 de noviembre.

“La Iglesia conmemora, no celebra, a los fieles que han fallecido”, dijo el padre Lira. “Los encomendamos a la misericordia de Dios. Ya no sabemos si comparten su gloria, pero los encomendamos a la providencia de Dios. Y por eso, como Iglesia, rezamos por ellos”.

La muerte ocupa un lugar único en la cultura mexicana. Según las investigaciones, las poblaciones prehispánicas celebraban una versión del Día de Muertos en la época de la cosecha. Los primeros evangelizadores católicos “cristianizaron” ese recuerdo de los muertos, según el padre Lira, quien enfatizó: “El mensaje cristiano es la muerte como un paso a la vida eterna. … La cultura mexicana no veía la vida después de la muerte”.

La tradición se ha convertido también en un espectáculo, gracias a la película de James Bond de 2015, Spectre, que incluía un desfile apócrifo del Día de Muertos. Las autoridades turísticas mexicanas copiaron el desfile, con marionetas gigantes de esqueletos, que atrae a multitudes al centro de la Ciudad de México.

Los espectadores se pintan la cara de blanco y negro y se visten con trajes de La Catrina, elegantes esqueletos que antes se utilizaban para burlarse de los mexicanos que aspiraban a ser europeos. Mientras tanto, los turistas acuden cada vez más a los cementerios para presenciar las festividades, lo que aporta una actividad económica muy necesaria a las oprimidas localidades rurales, pero perturba las conmemoraciones.

“Los habitantes del estado de Oaxaca han logrado crear un segundo Día de Muertos destinado exclusivamente a turistas y extranjeros”, explicó Shawn Haley, antropólogo canadiense que estudia esta festividad, a OSV News. El Día de Muertos alternativo “desvía la atención de los forasteros de las celebraciones del pueblo, que así pueden seguir siendo exclusivas de la comunidad y la familia”.

Los observadores afirman que un renovado sentido de orgullo por las tradiciones mexicanas, junto con películas como “Coco”, han acelerado la aceptación del Día de Muertos. El renovado interés por el Día de Muertos, por su parte, ha disminuido en gran medida el interés por Halloween, que había sido recuperado por los migrantes y había ido ganando terreno hasta hace poco. “Se considera una festividad estadounidense pintoresca”, afirmó Haley.

Los líderes de la Iglesia mexicana llevan mucho tiempo advirtiendo sobre el auge de Halloween. El padre Andrés Larios dijo que un grupo de jóvenes de su parroquia en Michoacán incluso intentó convertir el salón de funciones parroquiales en una casa encantada, algo que él aprovechó como oportunidad para enseñar.

“La Iglesia prefiere mil veces seguir fomentando este esa parte de que un día nos vamos a encontrar con nuestros seres queridos que murieron para este mundo, pero que siguen viviendo en el otro a a quitar todo esto que viene de Estados Unidos”, como Halloween, dijo Andrés Larios, párroco de la Diócesis de Apatzingán.

Según Haley, los católicos practicantes aún se refieren al Día de Muertos como Todos los Santos, que conmemora a los santos, y Fieles Difuntos, que conmemora a todos los creyentes, para “distinguirse de los católicos no practicantes”, aunque “la celebración en sí es exactamente la misma”.

Añadió: “En los hogares no católicos, se espera que los seres queridos fallecidos regresen a casa, mientras que, en los hogares católicos, el altar se convierte más en un memorial para los difuntos. Se trata menos de celebrar y más de recordar”.

Los sacerdotes están haciendo hincapié en la fe, junto con el recuerdo.

“Es muy importante recordar la importancia de orar por los santos el 1 de noviembre y orar por los difuntos el 2 de noviembre”, declaró a OSV News el padre Alan Camargo, portavoz de la Diócesis de Matamoros-Reynosa.

“La religión católica, el centro, es Cristo que muere y vence a la muerte”, continuó, añadiendo que “los altares a muertos, calaveras… eso no choca con la fe cristiana siempre y cuando descubramos la importancia del respeto a la vida y también del respeto a la muerte”.

David Agren escribe para OSV News desde Buenos Aires.

By Junno Arocho Esteves
(OSV News) – When Pope Leo XIV raised three women and four men to the altar on Oct. 19, he canonized a diverse group of religious and lay men and women, all bound by the virtue of holding on to their faith amid spiritual and external challenges.

The canonizations, which were announced by the Vatican June 13 during the pope’s first ordinary public consistory, elevated to sainthood seven candidates who hail from Venezuela, Turkey, Papua New Guinea and Italy.

St. María Carmen Elena Rendiles Martínez, who was born without a left arm, overcame physical challenges and founded a religious congregation, the Servants of Jesus of Caracas, which was dedicated to pastoral ministry and education.

St. Maria Troncatti, an Italian Salesian, dedicated her life as a missionary to Indigenous peoples in the Amazon rainforest, earning her the informal title of “doctor of the jungle,” while St. Vincenza Maria Poloni dedicated her ministry to the sick and the poor, whom she deemed as “our masters.”

Others, such as St. Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, an Armenian Catholic archbishop, and St. Peter To Rot, were martyred for their faith.

Among the most well-known is St. Bartolo Longo, a former Satanist priest who, after his conversion, dedicated his life as a Dominican tertiary to promoting the rosary and Marian devotion.

For Dominican Father Joseph Anthony Kress, promoter of the rosary for the Province of St. Joseph and associate director of the Dominican Friars Foundation, the example of the challenges faced by St. Longo and the other six sainthood candidates shows “that this earthly pilgrimage is not a sanitized experience.”

Speaking to OSV News Oct. 10, Father Kress said that like Christ, who stumbled and fell “on his way to making that supreme sacrifice,” Christian lives reflect the same struggle.

“We don’t need to try to perfect or sanitize our lives before we offer them to Jesus, but we can invite him into the suffering and the struggle,” he said.

“All of these saints experienced different elements of struggle throughout their lives: physical struggles, psychological struggles, spiritual desolations. But in the midst of all of that, they maintained a constant relationship with the Lord and invited him into those moments.”

“That’s where holiness is,” Father Kress added.

Another notable aspect of some of the candidates is the fact that they were lay members of the Catholic Church. St. Longo was a lay member of the Dominican order, while St. José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros of Venezuela was a Franciscan tertiary. St. Peter To Rot, a martyr from Papua New Guinea, was married and served as a lay catechist.

Father Kress told OSV News that those like Sts. Longo and Hernández prove that “we can still be inspired by the great charisms of these religious orders in the Catholic Church, and to be unafraid to pursue that; to be unafraid of committing to that.”

“We live in a society, man, that is just so fraught and afraid to make any kind of commitment to a specific thing,” he said. “And some of these saints who have been tertiaries have made those commitments, and it’s a great message of hope and confidence in the Lord, and confidence in our individual humanity and personalities to say, ‘This charism is something that attracts me, and I want to participate in that in ways that make sense.’”

Below are brief summaries of the church’s seven newest saints:

St. María Carmen Elena Rendiles Martínez was a Venezuelan religious sister and founder of the Servants of Jesus of Caracas. Born without a left arm, her life exemplified overcoming physical challenges. She established the Servants of Jesus of Caracas in 1965, dedicating her community to education and spiritual outreach. She died May 9, 1977, in Caracas. She is Venezuela’s first female saint.

St. José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros was a Venezuelan physician and scientist known widely as the “Doctor of the Poor.” Born Oct. 26, 1864, in Isnotú, Venezuela, he was instrumental in introducing modern medical science to the country and founded its first bacteriology laboratory. A devoted layman and Franciscan tertiary, he provided free medical care to the poor throughout his career. He died June 29, 1919, in Caracas after being struck by an automobile while running an errand for a sick patient.

St. Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan was the Armenian Catholic archbishop of Mardin. Born April 19, 1869, in Mardin, Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), he was consecrated as archbishop in 1911. During the Armenian Genocide in 1915, he was arrested by Ottoman authorities who demanded he renounce his Christian faith and convert to Islam. He refused and was subsequently tortured and martyred on June 11, 1915.

St. Peter To Rot was a married father and lay catechist from Papua New Guinea. Born in 1912 in Rakunai, he took on a vital leadership role when Japanese forces imprisoned missionaries during World War II. He became the sole spiritual guide for his community and strongly defended Christian marriage against the Japanese-promoted return of polygamy. For this opposition, he was arrested. He was martyred in a Japanese prison camp in Rakunai, Papua New Guinea, in July 1945.

St. Vincenza Maria Poloni (born Luigia Poloni) was an Italian religious sister and co-founder of the Sisters of Mercy of Verona. Born Jan. 26, 1802, in Verona, she dedicated her life to works of charity. She helped establish the congregation in 1840 to care for the sick, the poor, and orphans, emphasizing merciful love for the marginalized. She famously referred to the poor as “our masters.” She died Nov. 11, 1855, in Verona.

St. Maria Troncatti was a Salesian nun and nurse who served as a missionary in the Amazon rainforest. Born Feb. 16, 1883, in Corteno Golgi, Italy, she arrived in Ecuador in 1922 and spent nearly five decades working among the Indigenous Shuar people. Known as the “doctor of the jungle,” she ministered to physical and spiritual needs, notably promoting the dignity of women and reconciliation among tribal groups. She died Aug. 25, 1969, in Sucúa, Ecuador, in a small plane crash while traveling to a retreat.

St. Bartolo Longo was an Italian lawyer and lay Dominican tertiary. Born Feb. 10, 1841, in Latiano, he experienced a dramatic conversion after a period of involvement with a spiritualist cult, which included being consecrated as a satanic priest. He devoted his life to promoting the rosary and serving the materially and spiritually poor peasants near Pompeii, where he founded the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii and several charitable institutions for children. He died Oct. 5, 1926, in Pompeii.

(Junno Arocho Esteves writes for OSV News from Malmö, Sweden.)