Pope Francis holds an open-air mass to canonize fourteen new saints in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Oct. 20.Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
Pope Francis canonized 14 saints, one of whom was Canadian, during an open-air mass in St. Peter’s Square that was both celebratory and sombre, since most of the new saints had met violent ends.
Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis, the Quebec-born religious sister who founded the Institute of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family almost a century and a half ago, became Canada’s 15th saint. Francis said the new saints, including Sister Paradis, displayed “religious fervent with missionary zeal.”
In 1981, Pope John Paul II had recognized her “heroic virtue,” a beatification requirement that embodies the virtues of faith, hope and charity, and called her “humble among the humble.”
Francis also canonized two Italian saints and the 11 Martyrs of Damascus, who were murdered in 1860 during the Shiite Druze persecution of Christians, which had spread from Lebanon to Syria at the time.
Speaking before a crowd of thousands, in front of banners of the new saints that hung from the façade of St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis praised the saints’ bravery and missionary zeal.
“These new saints lived Jesus’s way: service,” the Pope said. “The faith and the apostolate they carried out did not feed their worldly desires and hunger for power but, on the contrary, they made themselves servants of their brothers and sisters, creative in doing the good, steadfast in difficulties and generous to the end.”
Pope Francis waves from the popemobile after canonizing 14 saints during a mass in St. Peter's Square on Sunday.Andrew Medichini/The Associated Press
Sister Paradis’s canonization was a long time coming, taking more than 70 years.
She was born Virginie Alodie Paradis in 1840 in L’Acadie, Que., roughly halfway between Montreal and the head of Lake Champlain. At a young age, she entered the convent of the Marianites of Holy Cross, a congregation of women dedicated to helping Holy Cross priests through teaching, housekeeping and tending to their care. Later, she was sent to teach at St. Vincent’s orphanage in New York.
In 1880 in New Brunswick, she founded the Institute of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family to support priests. The institute, which moved to Sherbrooke, Que., a few years later, is still going today, with 16 missions in Quebec, Honduras and Guatemala. The sisters’ website describes their mission as “the spiritual and material support of the ministry of priests.”
She died of cancer in Sherbrooke in 1912 at age 71 and was mourned by the 635 sisters of the institute as “the mother of all necessities.” In her name, the sisters expanded the institute, which at its peak in the 1950s had 1,100 members and formed missions overseas.
Sister Paradis’s beatification process began in 1952 in Sherbrooke. She was formally introduced as a Servant of God, the first step toward possible canonization, in 1966 under Pope Paul VI.
Pope John Paul II approved the first miracle attributed to her in 1984 and beatified her during his visit to Montreal in the same year.
A portrait of Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis, Quebec-born religious sister, is displayed during the mass and canonization of 14 saints at Saint Peter's Square.FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images
The second miracle was approved by Francis early this year and would confirm her canonization. Sister Paradis’s name was invoked in the “miraculous” cure of a child born in 1986 in Quebec with serious health problems, including “prolonged perinatal asphyxia with multi-organ failure and encephalopathy.” The child, who the Vatican has not identified, grew up healthy and is now a language teacher.
The Pope seemed in good form during his eucharistic celebration on a warm, cloudy day in Rome. As recently as September, he had cancelled appointments because of health issues and had several hospital visits earlier this year and in 2023 for a variety of ailments, ranging from lung inflammation to surgery to repair an abdominal hernia.
While most of the 11 Martyrs of Damascus – eight Franciscan friars and three lay Maronites – were of Spanish origin, some Lebanese count the Maronites as their own. Lebanese in St. Peter’s Square waved their country’s flag when they were canonized. The three were blood brothers – Francis, Mooti and Raphael Massabki – and were killed in Saint Paul Convent in Damascus on the same night that the friars died.
Antoinette Bou Dagher, a Lebanese employee of the ChariTV streaming platform, was among the faithful in St. Peter’s Square during Sunday’s canonization ceremony. “We have lots of Lebanese saints and now we have three more,” she said. “We are so proud of them. Our country is a war zone now and we needed some good news.”