Pope gives Venezuela reason to celebrate by canonizing its beloved 'doctor of the poor' as 1st saint

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VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV canonized Venezuela’s beloved “doctor of the poor” Sunday before tens of thousands of people, offering the South American nation its first saint and a reason to celebrate amid a yearslong economic crisis and new tensions with the United States.

José Gregorio Hernández, revered by millions for his dedication to poor people, was declared a saint alongside Mother Carmen Rendiles Martínez, the founder of a Venezuelan religious order, at a Mass in St. Peter’s Square that Leo called a “great celebration of holiness.”

Thousands of jubilant Venezuelans filled the square and draped Venezuelan flags on its police barricades, adding splashes of red, blue and yellow that perfectly matched the uniforms of the attending Swiss Guards. Thousands more who couldn't travel to Rome marked the occasion in Caracas, where the Vatican service was livestreamed before dawn at a downtown plaza.

The Mass, which the Vatican said drew some 70,000 people, also gave Papua New Guinea its first saint: Peter To Rot, a layman killed in prison in 1945 for standing up for monogamous marriage at a time when polygamy was practiced. In all, seven people were canonized in a ceremony that Pope Francis put in motion in some of his final acts as pope.

In fact, Francis approved Hernández’s canonization from his hospital room on Feb. 24, agreeing to bypass the Vatican’s typical miracle confirmation process to pronounce him a saint based on the “widespread veneration of the ‘doctor-saint’ among the faithful,” the Vatican said.

Hernández is beloved among Venezuelans, with his face plastered on street art around Caracas, in portraits in hospitals and in photos gracing individual home altars.

As a doctor in Caracas during the late 1800s and early 1900s, he refused to take money from poor people for his services and often gave them money for medicine, earning the nickname “doctor of the poor.” He was killed in 1919 while crossing a street shortly after picking up some medicine at a pharmacy to bring to a poor elderly woman.

He became a religious icon after his death, and when Pope John Paul II visited Venezuela in 1996, he received a petition signed by 5 million people — almost one in four Venezuelans — asking that he declare Hernández a saint.

“For them, this is indeed a national event of the highest order," said Silvia Correale, who spearheaded his sainthood case. “Certainly, the canonization of José Gregorio is desired by all the Venezuelan people, and has been waited for by all the people.”

Josè Ramon Malavecontreras, a Venezuelan resident in Rome, said his mother named him after Hernández and attended his canonization Sunday.

“They believed I’d be stillborn, so she dedicated his name to me for saving my life," he said Sunday. "Therefore, this moment was unmissable for me. I couldn’t fail to be here.”

In Caracas, Arquímides Blanco, 60, said he wasn’t a particular fan of Hernández but recognized the significance of his canonization for Venezuela now. Blanco belongs to a cultural collective commissioned to paint the streets surrounding Caracas' emblematic parish of La Pastora ahead of the canonization.

“I may not be a big fan of José Gregorio as such, but I understand that he is Venezuelan and that his canonization in the context of the whole geopolitical situation is important,” he said.

The canonization was a long-awaited celebration and a boost for Venezuela, just weeks after Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize. It comes as tensions mount with the United States over Washington’s use of military force against suspected drug cartels.

Just this past week, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing the execution of land operations in the South American country.

Venezuela’s economy has been in crisis for the past decade, compounded by U.S. sanctions and spurring the emigration of millions of Venezuelans, first to other South American nations and then, in more recent years, to the United States.

The government of President Nicólas Maduro – sworn in last year despite credible evidence he lost reelection — has been forced to cut subsidies, making many daily necessities unaffordable to the 80% of residents estimated to live in poverty.

In his homily, Leo held up all seven new saints as models for today's Catholics who carried "the lamp of the faith."

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

Also canonized Sunday were Archbishop Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, an Armenian Catholic who was killed for refusing to renounce his faith during what the Vatican has said was the Ottoman era genocide of Armenians; Sister Vincenza Maria Poloni, a 19th century founder of a religious order; Sister Maria Troncatti, an Italian missionary in Ecuador, and Bartolo Longo, who like Hernandez was canonized based on widespread veneration among the faithful, not a purported miraculous healing.

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Arraez reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Associated Press visual journalists Luigi Navarra, Silvia Stellacci and Maria Selene Clemente in Vatican City contributed to this report.

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