Pope presides over his first saint-making ceremony
Pope Benedict XVI presided over his first saint-making ceremony today, canonising five people in a Mass in St Peter's Square that also closed a meeting of the world's bishops.
A Chilean Jesuit who worked with the poor, two prelates beatified by Pope John Paul II during his 2001 visit to Ukraine and two Italians - one a Capuchin brother, the other a founder of a religious order - were being added to the list of the Roman Catholic Church's saints.
"Today I have the joy to preside for the first time over a canonisation rite," Benedict said in an opening prayer to the thousands of people gathered in the piazza.
The crowd applauded as he read out each of the names, standing on a platform under massive portraits of each of the five men that hung from St Peter's Basilica.
During his 26-year pontificate, John Paul canonised 482 people and beatified 1,338 - more than all his predecessors over the past 500 years combined.
Benedict is known to have approved the start of only one new cause since his April 19 election: that of John Paul himself. The cases of the five men being canonised Sunday began long before he became pope.
While it's too soon to say whether Benedict will keep up John Paul's unprecedented pace in naming role models for the Catholic faithful, the new pope has changed John Paul's practice and is presiding only over saint-making Masses. He has designated cardinals to celebrate Masses to beatify people.
Beatification is the last step before possible sainthood, and allows for local veneration. Canonisation, on the other hand, is an infallible declaration by the pope that a person who was virtuous to a heroic degree in life is now in heaven and worthy of honour and veneration by all the faithful.
Among the five being canonised toy is the Rev Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga, a Chilean Jesuit who lived from 1901 to 1952 and is known for his work with the poor as well as the young.
Another is Archbishop Josef Bilczewski, the archbishop of Lviv, Ukraine, who was greatly admired by Catholics, Orthodox and Jews alike during the First World War I. The archbishop's life spanned the time during which Lviv was under Polish control, after which it reverted back to Ukraine.
John Paul beatified Bilczewski during his 2001 visit to Ukraine, and during the same Mass also bestowed the honour on another Lviv prelate, the Rev Zygmunt Gorazdowski, who founded the Congregation for the Sisters of St Joseph to care for the sick and poor.
Italians Felice da Nicosia, a lay Capuchin who lived in the 1700s, and the Rev. Gaetano Cantanoso, who founded the Veronican Sisters of the Holy Face in 1934, round out the list.
