from Catholic News ServicePope Benedict XVI will create three new saints Oct. 23, including the founder of the Xaverian missionaries, Blessed Guido Maria Conforti.
The pope announced the date for the canonization ceremony at the end of what is known as an ordinary public consistory, a formal ceremony opened and closed with prayer, during which cardinals present in Rome express their support for the pope's decision to create new saints. Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes, read brief biographies of the three in Latin Feb. 21.
Blessed Conforti, founder of the Xaverian Foreign Missionary Society, was born in 1865 in Italy. Vice rector of a seminary even before his priestly ordination, he was said to have filled seminarians with an awareness of their obligation to be missionaries. In 1895, seven years after becoming a priest, he founded a congregation of consecrated men dedicated to the evangelization of non-Christians.
The others to be canonized Oct. 23, World Mission Sunday, are: Blessed Louis Guanella, an Italian priest who lived 1842-1915. He founded the Servants of Charity, the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence, and the Confraternity of St. Joseph, whose members pledge to pray for the sick and dying; and Blessed Bonifacia Rodriguez Castro, who lived 1837-1905. The Spanish founded the Servants of St. Joseph, a congregation originally dedicated to providing a religious and technical education to poor women.
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