Catholics to receive four new saints in October

Vatican City, Mar 3, 2008 / 10:42 am

On Saturday, Benedict XVI declared that four people will be recognized as saints in a ceremony to be held on Sunday October 12. The blesseds who will be canonized are: Gaetano Errico, Maria Bernarda Butler (nee Verena), Alfonsa of the Immaculate Conception (nee Anna Muttathupandathu), and Narcisa de Jesus Martillo Moran.

Gaetano Errico was an Italian teacher, born in 1791, who showed immense dedication to his students.  He not only educated his students but formed them spiritually with Christian doctrine and moral values. 

He experienced a life-changing event in 1818 while praying at a retreat.  St. Alphonsus Liguori appeared to him in a vision and told him that God wanted him to found a new religious congregation and to build a church in Secondigliano in honor of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Fr. Errico died in 1860 at the age of 69.

Maria Bernarda Butler will be the first modern Swiss woman to be canonized. 

Born in 1848 in Auw, eastern Switzerland, Maria entered the Capuchin Maria-Hilf convent at the age of 19.  She was named the mother superior only four years later. 

She later traveled to South America to establish a convent to teach and care for children in Ecuador, and later performed healing miracles in Colombia where she died at the age of 76.

The third Blessed is Anna Muttathupandathu born in Kerala, southern India, in 1910.  She was a professed sister of the Congregation of Poor Clares of the Third Order of St. Francis.  Also known as Alfonsa of the Immaculate Conception, she died in 1946 and will become India’s first female saint.

Blessed Narcisa was born on October 29, 1832 in the city of Nobol, Ecuador. Her parents were farmers and devout Christians. During her youth she was a seamstress and showed a great love for prayer.

She dedicated her early life to the service of her family, caring for the home and creating an atmosphere of charity, joy, and peace between her eight brothers and sisters.  After the death of her mother, she also devoted herself to the education of her younger siblings. 

Later she went to Guayaquil where she devoted herself to caring for abandoned children and young people.  She lived in Cuenca and later moved to Lima, Peru, where she was renowned for her qualities as a catechist of children and young people, until her death on December 8, 1869.