Theologian, 4 women canonized
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday canonized Cardinal John Henry Newman, praising the 19thcentury Anglican convert who became an influential, unifying figure in both the Anglican and Catholic churches.
Francis quoted from one of Newman’s hymns, “Lead, Kindly Lights,” as he presided over Mass on Sunday before an estimated 50,000 people in a sun-drenched St. Peter’s Square to declare Cardinal John Henry Newman and four women saints.
Newman, a theologian and poet, is admired by Catholics and Anglicans alike because he followed his conscience at great personal cost. When he defected from the Church of England to the Catholic Church in 1845, he lost friends, work and even family ties, believing the truth he was searching for could only be found in the Catholic faith.
Newman was canonized along with four women, including three nuns from the 19th and 20th centuries: Sisters Giuseppina Vannini of Italy, Mariam Thresia Chiramel Mankidiyan of India and Brazilian Dulce Lopes Pontes, as well as Swiss laywoman Margherita Bays.
Born in 1914 to a well-todo family in Brazil, Lopes Pontes dedicated herself to the country’s poor and founded several charitable organizations. The Romanborn Vannini, meanwhile, was orphaned at 7 yet went onto found a religious order dedicated to caring for the sick.
Mankidiyan, an Indian nun who is said to have suffered from the stigmata wounds of Christ, also founded a congregation that looked after the poor and the outcast. Bays, a seamstress, is said to have suffered the stigmata as well.
“They walked in faith and now we invoke their intercession,” Francis said of the five new saints.