Pope Benedict canonises five saints
Benedict presided over the ceremony in a packed St Peter’s Square, decorated with tapestries featuring pictures of each of the five.
He praised each as a model for the faithful and said their lives and work were as relevant today as they were 700 years ago.
Benedict singled out the Rev Arcangelo Tadini, who lived at the turn of the last century and founded an order of nuns to tend to factory workers at the dawn of the industrial era. Tadini also created an association to provide emergency loans to workers in financial difficulties.
“How prophetic was Don Tadini’s charismatic intuition, and how current his example is today, in this time of grave economic crisis,” said Benedict.
The only non-Italian canonised yesterday was Nuno Alvares Pereira, who helped secure Portugal’s independence from the Spanish kingdom of Castile, leading Portuguese forces in the critical Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385.
After leaving the military, he entered religious life as a Carmelite and changed his name to Nuno de Santa Maria.
Also canonised was Bernardo Tolomei, a nearly blind monk who founded the Benedictine Congregation of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto in the 1340s.
He died in 1348 along with 82 of his monks after leaving the safety of his monastery to tend to plague victims in Siena.
Others canonised were Gertrude Comensoli and Caterina Volpicelli, 19th century Italian nuns who founded religious order.
