Here are hundreds of new reasons to thank Pope Francis—or at least hundreds of saints to pray to. The new pontiff on Sunday gave the Catholic Church hundreds of new saints, including 813 Italians who were beheaded in 1480 for refusing to convert to Islam. Their approval for sainthood was put through Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who retired in February and who had stumbled in his relationship with Muslims while pontiff. Francis, for his part, has called for better relations with Islam. Also among the new saints was Colombia’s first, a nun who taught and acted as a spiritual guide among indigenous people.
