Nuns, teen influencer and ex-Satanic priest among 7 new saints

Bells rang out on Sunday over St Peter’s Square as Pope Leo XIV created seven new saints, including the first from Papua New Guinea, an archbishop killed in the Armenian genocide and a Venezuelan “doctor of the poor”.

Also canonised during the solemn ceremony, under sunny skies in the vast plaza on World Mission Day, were three nuns who dedicated their lives to the poor and sick, and former satanic priest Bartolo Longo.

The Italian lawyer born in 1841 subsequently rejoined the Catholic faith and went on to found the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii.

“Today we have before us seven witnesses, the new Saints, who, with God’s grace, kept the lamp of faith burning,” Leo told an audience the Vatican estimated at some 55,000 people.

“May their intercession assist us in our trials and their example inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness,” he said during his homily.

Huge portraits of the seven were unfurled from windows over the square as Leo, the first US pope, exited St Peter’s Basilica dressed in a ceremonial white cassock with a white mitre on his head, preceded by white-clad bishops and cardinals.