Pope Benedict XVI today gave the Roman Catholic church four new saints, including an Indian woman whose canonization is seen as a morale boost to Christians in India who have suffered Hindu violence. Thousands of faithful from the homelands of the new saints, including a delegation from India, where Catholics are a tiny minority, turned out for the ceremony in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City today.
The honor for Sister Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception, the first Indian woman to become a saint, comes as Christians increasingly have been the object of attacks from Hindu mobs in eastern and southern India.
Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, had beatified Alphonsa during a pilgrimage to India in 1986. Beatification is the last formal step before sainthood, the Church's highest honor for its faithful. Alphonsa, a nun from southern India, was 35 when she died in 1946.
The other new saints are: Gaetano Errico, a Neapolitan priest who founded a missionary order in the 19th century; Sister Maria Bernarda, born Verena Buetler in Switzerland in 1848, who worked as a nun in Ecuador and Colombia; and Narcisa de Jesus Martillo Moran, a 19th century laywoman from Ecuador who helped the sick and the poor.