Pope sets consistory to consider declaring eight new saints

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Although Pope Francis already set Aug. 3 as the date to declare the sainthood of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, Pope Leo XIV will hold a meeting with cardinals to approve his canonization and that of seven other people.

The meeting, known as an “ordinary public consistory,” is scheduled for June 13, the Vatican announced.

Cardinals living in or visiting Rome are invited to participate in the consistory, which typically is a prayer service that includes the reading of a brief biography of the sainthood candidate, the pope’s solicitation of the cardinals’ approval of the canonization and, usually, an announcement of the date for the ceremony.

Since the canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis, which had been scheduled for April 27, was postponed after the death of Pope Francis, it is possible that in conjunction with the consistory the Vatican would announce a new date to proclaim him a saint.

Announcing the consistory June 4, the Vatican said the cardinals will approve the canonizations of:

— Blessed Ignatius Maloyan, the martyred Armenian Catholic archbishop of Mardin, which is in present-day Turkey; born in 1869, he was arrested, tortured and executed in Turkey in 1915.

— Blessed Peter To Rot, a martyred lay catechist, husband and father from Papua New Guinea. Born in 1912, he was arrested in 1945 during the Japanese occupation in World War II and was killed by lethal injection while in prison.

— Blessed Vincenza Maria Poloni, founder of the Sisters of Mercy of Verona, Italy; she lived from 1802-1855.

— Blessed Maria Rendiles Martínez, the Venezuelan founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus. Born in Caracas in 1903, she died in 1977. She will be Venezuela’s first female saint.

— Blessed Maria Troncatti, a Salesian sister born in Italy in 1883 who became a missionary in Ecuador in 1922. She died in a plane crash in 1969.

— Blessed José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, a Venezuelan doctor born in 1864. He was a Third Order Franciscan and became known as “the doctor of the poor.” He was killed in an accident in 1919 on his way to helping a patient.

— Blessed Frassati, was born in 1901 to a wealthy and influential family in Turin in northern Italy. He was popular, known for his practical jokes, for daily Mass attendance and for his charitable work with the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He contracted polio, probably from one of the people he was helping, and died in 1925 at the age of 24.

— Blessed Bartolo Longo, an Italian lawyer born in 1841. He had been a militant opponent of the church and involved in the occult, but converted, dedicating himself to charity and to building the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompei. He died in 1926.

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