Overview

• About 70,000 people filled St. Peter’s Square and Via della Conciliazione for the canonization Mass, according to the Vatican press office.
• The seven are José Gregorio Hernández, Bartolo Longo, Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, Peter To Rot, Vincenza Maria Poloni, María Carmen Rendiles Martínez, and Maria Troncatti.
• Peter To Rot becomes the first saint from Papua New Guinea, and Maloyan’s recognition recalls the Armenian martyrs of 1915.
• Italian President Sergio Mattarella attended, alongside foreign dignitaries including Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Patriarch Bechara Rai, and Patriarch Raphaël Bedros XXI Minassian.
• In his homily and Angelus, Leone XIV described the saints as authentic witnesses and appealed for peace, citing Myanmar, the Holy Land, and Ukraine, as Venezuelan officials celebrated the moment online and diaspora groups held a prayerful protest in Rome.