All Saints – New Saints

As we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints today, I thought of sharing with you a short list of new saints about whom we may not know much. In my daily Masses, I always like to highlight the lives of our saints, which reminds me of a young girl in a former parish who had an excellent description of saints. When I asked them ‘who are the saints?’ she thought of the stained-glass windows we had in our church and the light shining through them, and her response was perfect: ‘a saint is one through whom the light of God shines through....’ Yes, the Light of God shines through these saints who have done something very ordinary, but in an extraordinary way.

Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin – the parents of St Therese of Lisieux, besides three other girls, who were also, Carmelite sisters.

St Josephine Bakhita – a Sudanese girl who was sold as a slave, ending up as a nanny in Italy and became a nun, beloved by everyone who knew her.

St. George Preca – the first official Maltese saint who started a program of teaching catechism to young boys and girls and young people, a program called MUSEUM.

St. Junipero Serra – a Franciscan monk who started the missions in California, thereby bringing the faith to the west coast of the USA, establishing various Missions all along the California coast.

St. John XXIII – the Pope who convened the Vatican Council II, and changed the way we celebrate Mass.

St. Elizabeth of the Trinity – a discalced Carmelite nun who was a mystic and spiritual writer, besides being an accomplished pianist.

St. Jose Sanchez del Rio – a young Mexican Cristero who was martyred for not renouncing his faith during the Mexican revolution of the 1920s.

St. Antonio Primaldo – along with 812 residents of Otranto, in Southern Italy, who resisted the cruel Ottoman Empire in 1480 and were martyred for their faith.

St. Gianna Beretta Molla – she gave her life for her unborn daughter, instead of doing an abortion to save her own life for a cure for cancer.