Nuns from Palestine canonised by Pope

POPE FRANCIS has canonised two nuns from what was 19th century Palestine in the hopes of encouraging Christians across the Middle East who are facing a wave of persecution from Islamic extremists.

Sisters Mariam Bawardy and Marie Alphonsine Ghattas were among four sisters who were made saints at a Mass in St Peter’s Square.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and an estimated 2,000 pilgrims from the region, some waving Palestinian flags, were on hand for the canonisation of the first saints from the Holy Land since the early years of Christianity.

Church officials are holding up the new saints as a sign of hope and encouragement for Christians across the Middle East at a time when violent persecution have driven many of them from the region of Christ’s birth.

In his homily, Francis said the two women – as well as new saints Jeanne Emilie de Villeneuve, from France, and Maria Cristina, of the Immaculate Conception from Italy – were models of showing unity and charity towards all.

Bawardy was a mystic born in 1843 in what is now the Galilee region of northern Israel. She is said to have received the “stigmata” – bleeding wounds like those that Jesus Christ suffered on the cross – and died at the age of 33 in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where she founded a Carmelite order monastery that still exists.

Ghattas, born in Jerusalem in 1847, opened girls’ schools, fought female illiteracy, and co-founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Rosary. The order today boasts dozens of centres all over the Middle East.