Pope Francis proclaimed Uruguay’s first saint, María Francisca de Jesús Rubatto

This Sunday Pope Francis announced the canonization of ten new saints, including the nun María Francisca de Jesús Rubatto (1844-1904). This is about first saint of Uruguay.

“Holiness is not the work of some heroism, but of lots of everyday love“, said the pontiff from Saint Peter’s Square during the mass where there were more than 45,000 faithful present, according to the Vatican, including the president of Italy Sergio Mattarella.

The nun who was declared a saint this Sunday was born on February 14, 1844 in the town of Carmañola of Italy, in the province of Turin; but by his own choice he lived and developed his pastoral work in Uruguay, where he died on August 6, 1904.

“The Church greets you, Sister Maria Francesca de Jesusfounder of the Tertiary Capuchin Sisters of Loano, the first Blessed of Uruguay ”, featured by John Paul II during 1993 when he beatified her in Vatican Square.

Mother Francisca chose the area of ​​La Teja, Belvedere, Paso de la Arena and Barra de Santa Lucía, where, according to the Uruguayan Church, she carried out social and pastoral work with the workers who went to the slaughterhouse every Sunday morning. . . In fact, it turned out that he boarded the train at four in the morning to accompany them.

His greatest preaching focused on caring for the sick and children, and also on abandoned youth.

Rubatto was canonized after the Vatican approved a miracle associated with his intercession on March 24, 2000 in Colonia, Uruguay, when there was an unexplained recovery of a young man suffering from head trauma with severe subarachnoid hemorrhage, severe comaintracranial hypertension and diffuse axonal damage.

Along with Rubatto, nine new saints were also proclaimed, including charles de foucauldthe French priest who was a missionary in the desert of Algeria, and Titus Bradsmathe Carmelite priest was killed in a Nazi concentration camp.

The French too Cesar de Bus (1544-1607), the founder of the Congregation of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine, which worked for the revival of Christianity at a time turbulent at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation; and the sister River Marie (1768-1838), a teacher, founder of the Mary Presentation congregation.

The first Indian layman to become a saint was the martyr Lazarus Devasahayam Pillai (1712-1752), a Hindu convert to Christianity. Arrested, tortured for three years, and then killed, he refused to renounce his faith.

Others were Italian priests Luigi Maria Palazzolo (1827-1886) at Giustino Maria Russolillo (1891-1955); and the Italian nuns Maria Domenica Mantovani (1862-1934) at Maria di Gesu Santocanale (1852-1923).

With information from Telam