These 7 New Saints Are Arriving at Just the Right Time| National Catholic Register

COMMENTARY: Canonizations often arrive with providential timing, and the newest saints — from Peter To Rot to Bartolo Longo — speak powerfully to the Church’s needs today.

The causes of saints usually take decades to reach canonization. It also happens that saints long in the making — or better, in the recognizing — arrive at the altar at exactly the right time.

On Nov. 12, 1989, just days after the tearing open of the Berlin Wall, Pope St. John Paul II canonized St. Agnes of Prague, 700 years after her death, and John Paul’s 19th-century fellow Cracovian, Brother Albert Chmielowski. Precisely as the countries enslaved by the Soviet Empire were becoming free, they received, with providential timing, two new heavenly patrons. That could not have been arranged in advance. 

Sometimes a cause becomes ready at a time suitable for some advance arranging, as when John Paul canonized Sister Faustina Kowalska as the first saint of the third millennium in 2000, just weeks before beatifying Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the children of Fatima, spiritual protagonists of the 20th century.

Something similar may be afoot this Sunday, when Pope Leo XIV will canonize seven new saints: Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, Peter To Rot, Vincenza Maria Poloni, Maria del Monte Carmelo Rendiles Martínez, Maria Troncatti, José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros and Bartolo Longo. Some of the saints are timely indeed.

Peter To Rot, the son of early converts to Catholicism in Papua New Guinea, was a lay catechist at a time when, without them, amid a scarcity of priests, the proclamation of the faith depended upon them. He was a martyr under the Japanese, who occupied Papua New Guinea during World War II. Eighty years ago, in July 1945, he was detained and killed for continuing his catechetical work and for preaching against polygamy, which the Japanese were attempting to revive in Papua New Guinea. 

In 2025, his story particularly resonates in the young Churches of Africa, where polygamy remains a pressing pastoral challenge, as well across Asia, especially China, where religious liberty is frequently denied. Peter To Rot is also a powerful intercessor for all lay faithful who are catechists and evangelists, from remote African villages to American college campuses.

Venezuela, now several decades into a regime that has suppressed civil liberties, persecuted the Church, suspended democratic norms, pauperized an oil-rich nation and produced a massive outflow of political and economic refugees, will have two new saints on Sunday. The suffering Venezuelan people will have a rare occasion to celebrate with national pride at a moment when their country has returned to the headlines, President Donald Trump having authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations against the Venezuelan regime. 

María del Carmen Rendiles Martínez, a nun and founder of the Sister Slaves of Jesus, will be canonized along with the 19th-century lay physician Dr. José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros. 

Celebrated even outside the Catholic faithful, many Venezuelan boys are named after José Gregorio, popularly known as the “doctor of the poor.” He is a genuine national hero, and therefore a model of what admirable Venezuelan identity looks like, rather than the fraudulent and criminal regime that has usurped leadership in Venezuela. 

José Gregorio was a man of faith and science, a Third Order Franciscan, and a scholar who taught in university hospitals. Out of Christian charity, he devoted his energies to providing good medical care to the indigent and was especially close to the suffering during the great influenza pandemic of 1918. He died in 1919, ironically hit by an ambulance, of which there were not many at the time.

In the midst of the Venezuelan crisis, after the pandemic, at a time when the poor — even in the United States — fear that illness could mean financial catastrophe, Dr. Gregorio is very much a saint for 2025.

The new saint closest to Pope Leo XIV’s heart will undoubtedly be the Italian associated with the Holy Father’s devotion to Our Lady of Pompeii. Bartolo Longo was the son of a devout physician but dabbled in “spiritualism” during his university years in Naples. Like others who seek out spirits, Longo found them — evil spirits. He practiced Satanic worship and was “ordained” as a Satanic priest. 

Satanism and the occult are more prevalent today than in recent decades. Satan worship and the conjuring of evil spirits is amplified by the same digital environment that has the happier effect of leading new converts, especially young converts to Catholicism in parishes and on campus. It is as if a great digital centrifuge spins out some toward the Lord and some toward the devil, thus a convert from Satanism is a model needed now.

Satanism brought Longo extreme distress, such that he renounced it, returned to the Catholic faith and became a Third Order Dominican in 1871. Greatly devoted to the Rosary — John Paul called him the “Apostle of the Rosary” at his beatification in 1980 — he and his wife would lead the building of a new church at Pompeii, now the Basilica of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary of Pompeii. 

Pope Leo XIV referred to Our Lady of Pompeii at his first appearance on the loggia of St. Peter’s after his election on May 8, her feast day under that title. More recently, he visited the Domus Australia in Rome on the eve of the feast of Our Lady of Rosary to bless a Marian image of Pompeii associated with Longo. Our Lady of Pompeii may well be to this pontificate what Our Lady, Untier of Knots, was for Pope Francis. 

Canonizations come at their own pace and rhythm — it has been nearly 50 years since Longo was beatified. Yet it might be thought that his canonization was waiting as a gift to a new Pope devoted to Pompeii. With the centenary of Longo’s death being observed next year, the new saint of the Rosary will accompany the Holy Father through the initial phase of his papacy.