Former satanic priest and

Pope Leo XIV has created seven new saints, bringing to nine the total number of people who have received this title posthumously since he was appointed to lead the Catholic Church earlier this year. Among the last honored group was a lawyer who at one point became a satanic priest, before denouncing Satan and returning to his Christian faith.

The bells rang in St. Peter’s Square for Sunday’s ceremony, which featured an audience the Vatican estimated at about 70,000 people. There, the Pope canonized that former occult priest, Bartolo Longo, along with a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea, an archbishop murdered in the Armenian genocide, a Venezuelan “doctor of the poor,” and three nuns who dedicated their lives to the poor and sick.

The former satanic priest Longo, an Italian lawyer born in 1841 and died in 1926, rejoined Catholicism and founded the Pontifical Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii.

“Today we have before us seven witnesses, the new saints, who, with the grace of God, kept the lamp of faith burning,” Leo told the crowd gathered at the Vatican during his homily. “May his intercession help us in our trials and his example inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness.”

Huge portraits of the seven were displayed from the windows of the square as Leo, the first American pope, emerged from St. Peter’s Basilica dressed in a ceremonial white cassock and a miter on his head, preceded by white-robed bishops and cardinals.

Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints (the Vatican department in charge of beatification and canonization), read aloud profiles of the seven to applause from the crowd.

With Leo’s reading of the canonization formula, they were officially declared saints.

In his homily, Leo recognized the importance of the world’s “material, cultural, scientific and artistic treasures,” but said that “without faith their true meaning is lost,” according to the Vatican. Describing the new saints as “martyrs to their faith,” “evangelizers and missionaries,” “charismatic founders” of congregations, or “benefactors of humanity,” the Pope also encouraged his followers to lean on their faith at times when the suffering around them might raise doubts.

“When we are ‘crucified’ by pain and violence, by hatred and war, Christ is already there, on the cross for us and with us,” he stated. “There is no cry that God does not comfort; there is no tear that is far from his heart.”

Canonization Rite

Sunday’s canonization rite was the second for the former Robert Prevost since he was appointed leader of the Catholic Church on May 8.

Last month, Italians proclaimed saints Carlo Acutis, a teenager dubbed “God’s influencer” who spread the faith online before his death at age 15 in 2006, and Pier Giorgio Frassati, considered a model of charity who died in 1925, aged 24.

Canonization is the final step towards sainthood in the Catholic Church, after beatification.

Three conditions are required: the most important is that the individual has performed at least two miracles. It must be at least five years since death and have led an exemplary Christian life.

Martyrs, humanitarians

Among those sanctified on Sunday were Peter To Rot, a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea killed during the Japanese occupation during World War II, Armenian bishop Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan killed by Turkish forces in 1915, and Venezuelan José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, a layman who died in 1919, whom the late Pope Francis called a “doctor close to the most weak.”

Also from Venezuela came María Carmen Rendiles Martínez, a nun born without a left arm who overcame her disability to found the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus before her death in 1977. She became the first saint of the South American country.

The canonized Italian nuns are Vincenza Maria Poloni, founder in the 19th century of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of Verona, which primarily cares for the sick in hospitals, and Maria Troncatti of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.

In the 1920s, Troncatti arrived in Ecuador to dedicate his life to helping its indigenous population.

Circling St. Peter’s Square in his popemobile after the service, Leo went far beyond its limits, traveling along the Via della Conciliazione that links the Vatican to Rome, stopping frequently to bless babies among thousands of well-wishers.

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