VATICAN CITY – A French nun who provided education to pioneers on the American frontier and a Mexican bishop who fought anti-clerical policies in the 1920s were among four new saints named by the pope Sunday.
Also included in the new roll call of saints named by Pope Benedict XVI were two Italians: a nun who advocated public schooling for girls in late 17th century Italy and a priest who was a trailblazer for education of the deaf.
“The Church rejoices in the four new saints,” Benedict told a crowd of several thousand people at the ceremony in St. Peter’s Square. “May their example inspire us and their prayers obtain for us guidance and courage.”
Ailing Chicago Cardinal Francis George was among those celebrating mass on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica. He and other Americans were there to honor Mother Theodore Guerin, one of the new saints, who established St. Mary-of-the-Woods College for women in Indiana in 1841.
Despite decades of poor health, Guerin, who was born in 1798, set out with a handful of fellow French nuns for Indiana, where they founded a simple log-cabin chapel. For years, she resisted a local bishop’s opposition to her plans to establish a local community of nuns.
“Mother Theodore overcame many challenges and persevered in the work that the Lord has called her to do,” the pope said in his homily.
Phil McCord, the American whose restored vision was judged by the Vatican to be the miracle necessary for Guerin’s sainthood, called the ceremony “overwhelming.”
McCord, a 60-year-old engineer who manages the campus of Guerin’s order, recalled how he had faced a corneal transplant after damage from cataract surgery. He entered the chapel at the college, asked Guerin for help and his eyesight started to improve the next morning, said McCord, the son of a lay Baptist minister.
Angela White, 42, of Indianapolis, who graduated from St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, said Guerin “fought against all the odds.”
“Mother Theodore once said that we are not asked to do all of God’s work in this world, just the work we can do, and I think this is exactly what we have to do,” White said.
Also named a saint was Mexican Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia, who risked his life to tend to the wounded during the Mexican revolution – sometimes disguised as a street vendor or a musician.
In 1921, he renovated a seminary in Jalapa, Mexico, but the government later seized the building. He succeeded in having the seminary operate clandestinely for 15 years in Mexico City. He died in 1938.
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