Vatican City, Oct 3, 2004 / 22:00 pm
On Sunday in St. Peter's Square, in a ceremony attended by 30,000 pilgrims including dozens of members from the royal families of Europe, who appeared in their traditional colorful garments, Pope John Paul II beatified Servants of God Pierre Vigne (1670-1740), Joseph-Marie Cassant (1878-1903), Anna Katharina Emmerick (1774-1824), Maria Ludovica De Angelis (1880-1962) and Emperor Charles of Austria (1887-1922).
The Pope said that the new blesseds "allowed themselves to be guided by the Word of God as by a luminous and sure light, which never failed to illuminate their path."
The Holy Father emphasized that every day Emperor and King Charles of Austria - in whose honor Europe’s royalty had flown to Rome - faced the challenge of Christians "to seek out the will of God in everything, to know it and to put it into action.”
“He was a friend of peace,” said the Holy Father. “In his eyes, war was 'something horrible.' When he ascended to the throne in the middle of the fury of World War I, he tried to take up the peace initiative of my predecessor Benedict XV. ... In his political conduct, his priority was to follow the call to sanctity of Christians. Therefore, he considered the idea of social love important,” he continued.