800 saints canonized, At Mass for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Pope Francis canonized 800
Martyrs from the Italian city of Otranto, along with two Latin American
religious Foundresses, Mother Laura Montoya e Upegui – the first
Colombian saint – and Mother Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala, from Mexico.
In his homily, the Holy Father asked us to “look on the new saints in
the light of the Word of God proclaimed: a Word that invited us to be
faithful to Christ, even unto martyrdom; a word that recalled
to us the
urgency and the beauty of bringing Christ and his Gospel to everyone; a
word that spoke to us about the witness of charity, without which even
martyrdom and mission lose their Christian savor.”
Today, he said,
“the Church proposes for our veneration a host of martyrs, who were
called together to the supreme witness to the Gospel.” The more than 800
Martyrs of Otranto, when faced with the choice of renouncing Christ or
death, remained faithful to the Gospel. It is precisely their faith, the
Pope said, that gave them the strength to remain faithful. He prayed,
“As we venerate the martyrs of Otranto, let us ask God to sustain those
many Christians who, in these times and in many parts of the world,
right now, still suffer violence, and give them the courage and fidelity
to respond to evil with good.”
Pope Francis then turned to Saint
Laura Montoya, “an instrument of evangelization, first as teacher and
then as the spiritual mother of the indigenous peoples.” He said, “This
first saint born on the beautiful Colombian soil, teaches us to be
generous [together] with God, not to live the faith alone – as if we
could live our faith in isolation – but to communicate, to radiate the
joy of the Gospel by word and witness of life in every place we find
ourselves.”
He continued, “The martyrs’ faithfulness even unto
death, the proclamation of the Gospel are rooted in the love of God that
has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit and in the
witness we must bear to this love in our daily lives.” Saint Maria
Guadalupe Garcia Zavala, he said, knew this well. She gave up “a
comfortable life to follow the call of Jesus, taught people to love
poverty, in order the more to love the poor and the sick.” This, the
Pope said, “This is what it means to touch the flesh of Christ. The
poor, the abandoned, the sick, the marginalized are the flesh of Christ.
And Mother Lupita touched the flesh of Christ and taught us this
conduct: [to be] unabashed,[to be] unafraid, [to be] not loathe to touch
the flesh of Christ. Mother Lupita understood what it means ‘to touch
the flesh of Christ’.”
