The pope added seven names to the holy rosters today. From the first canonized Native American to the second Philippine, a guide to recognizing Christianity's newest saints.
Known as Lily of the Mohawks, Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 in present-day New York. She was orphaned at age 4 thanks to a smallpox outbreak that ruined her eyesight and left her body badly scarred. Baptized by Jesuit missionaries, Tekakwitha often found herself being persecuted for her Christian faith. She died at age 24 in a territory that would later become Canada. She is the first Native American saint.
Marianne Cope is considered a health pioneer for opening and operating a few of the first general hospital facilities in the United States. She instituted cleanliness standards at her hospitals, where all were welcomed to seek help no matter their race or ability to pay. But she was canonized for voluntarily banishing herself to the Hawaiian island of Molokai, where the sick were quarantined. (It was a one-way trip—the government of Hawaii didn’t allow people to return.) She worked there for three decades to give the patients a better standard of living and health care before passing away in 1918 at age 80. She is now one of only a handful of American saints.
Pedro Calungsod is now the second saint from the Philippines. He was in his teens when he traveled to Guam with Spanish Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century. Their goal was to convert as many of the natives to Christianity as possible. But Calungsod died in 1672 when he and another missionary tried to baptize a baby. According to Philippine news organizations, Calungsod was killed by villagers who threw spears at him and then dumped his body in the ocean.
A French Jesuit missionary, Father Jacques Berthieu died in Madagascar in 1896 in the midst of a violent uprising. Berthieu was trying to flee with a group of refugees when he was caught by a local tribe. The chief offered to keep Berthieu alive if he renounced his faith. When he refused, he was attacked, beaten to death, and then his body was thrown into a river.
Giovanni Battista Piamarta was an Italian priest who launched a Catholic printing and publishing organization. He “raised awareness of the need for a cultural and social presence of Catholicism in the modern world,” the pope said of Piamarta, who also founded a religious order to help young people. He died in 1913.
A Spanish nun, Carmen Salles y Barangueras founded the Congregation of the Conceptionist Missionary Sisters of Teaching in 1892. Salles y Barangueras was born in 1848 and dedicated her life to teaching the young. She died in 1911, almost two decades after setting up the missionary.
German Anna Schaeffer came from very modest means. She wanted to become a nun, but did not have the money needed to pay the dowry to be accepted into the cloister. To save up, she worked as a maid, but fell into a boiler and was left with incurable burns on her legs. Bedridden for the rest of her life, Schaeffer was in constant pain and became a model of faith from her home, counseling others and praying persistently. She died in 1925.
