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Since yesterday, the Catholic Church has seven new saints: women and men from four continents canonized by Leo XIV in St. Peter's Square. Three are Italian: Bartolo Longo (1841-1926) of Salento, founder of Pompeii's sanctuary; Vincenza Maria Poloni (1802-1855) of Verona, founder of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy, whose apostolate focused on the elderly, the sick, and the children; Maria Troncatti (1883-1969) of Brescia, a nun of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, who was a missionary in Ecuador and the Amazon rainforest, where she was known as "Madrecita". The remaining four individuals hail from America, Oceania, and Asia: the Venezuelan nun Carmen Rendíles Martínez (1903-1977), who founded the Servants of Jesus and "opened her heart" to the poorest before reaching out to priests; the Venezuelan doctor of the poor, José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros (1864-1919); the catechist from Papua New Guinea, Peter To Rot (1912-1945), who was arrested for his opposition to polygamy and executed by lethal injection; and the Armenian archbishop Ignatius Choukrallah Maloyan (1869-1915), Armenian archbishop and martyr during the extermination of his people.
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