The New Saints and Blesseds of 2024
Fifteen new saints and sixteen new blesseds were honored in the two canonization ceremonies and eleven beatification ceremonies that took place in 2024. Then, a week before Christmas, sixteen Discalced Carmelite nuns were canonized through the relatively rare act of equivalent (equipollent) canonization.
A 2005 curial document notes that “canonization is the supreme glorification by the Church of a Servant of God raised to the honors of the altar with a decree declared definitive and preceptive for the whole Church, involving the solemn Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff.” Canonization is typically preceded by the papal approval of a miracle attributed to the saint’s intercession.
Beatification, the document continues, “consists in the concession of a public cult in the form of an indult and limited to a Servant of God whose virtues to a heroic degree, or martyrdom, have been duly recognized.” Beatification is thus typically preceded by (a) the papal recognition of martyrdom or (b) a decree of heroic virtues declaring the Servant of God “venerable,” followed by the papal approval of a miracle. The document notes that the liturgical cult of the blessed, according to the formula of beatification, is limited in locis ac modis iure statutis (“in places and modes established by law”).
St. María Antonia (Mama Antula)
On February 11, Pope Francis canonized St. Maria Antonia de San José (1730-1799), an Argentine woman colloquially known as Mama Antula. As noted in a previous CWR article, St. María Antonia was a beata: a consecrated woman who made private vows and lived in a beaterio (convent) whose direction was entrusted to priests of the Society of Jesus.
In 1767, King Charles III of Spain expelled the Jesuits from his empire. María Antonia spent the remaining decades of her life continuing the Jesuit apostolate of spiritual exercises. Walking thousands of miles across Argentina and Uruguay, she organized retreats preached by non-Jesuit priests. She eventually settled in Buenos Aires, where she founded a community of consecrated women now known as the Hijas del Divino Salvador (Daughters of the Divine Savior).
María Antonia was declared venerable in 2010 and beatified in 2016. The miracle attributed to her intercession prior to her canonization was “the rapid, complete and lasting healing of a sixty-year-old father of a family, from ischemic stroke with hemorrhagic infarction in several areas, sepsis, deep coma, and resistant septic shock with multiple organ failure, in July 2017.”
During the canonization Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica (video), Pope Francis preached that St. María Antonia was a “‘wayfarer’ of the Spirit. She travelled thousands of kilometers on foot, crossing deserts and dangerous roads, in order to bring God to others. She is a model of fervor and apostolic courage. When the Jesuits were expelled, the Spirit ignited in her a missionary fire grounded on trust in Providence and perseverance.”
