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Catholic World News News Feature

Five candidates near canonization February 16, 2005

Five candidates for canonization are set to be approved on February 24.

At an ordinary consistory, to be held in the Clementine Hall of the apostolic palace, the cardinals gathered in the consistory will hear the case for canonization of Blesseds Jozef Bilczewski, Gaetano Catanoso, Zygmunt Gorazdowski, Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga, and Felice Da Nicosia. With the approval of the consistory, Pope John Paul II will then set the dates for their canonization.

Vatican officials are unsure whether or not Pope John Paul II will attend the consistory. It is expected that he will set dates in the near future for the canonization ceremonies. The five candidates come from Chile, Poland, Ukraine, and Italy.

An ordinary consistory is a meeting of the cardinals who are present in Rome at that time. The approval of consistory, on the recommendation of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, is the final step in the process that leads to canonization. In each case, the candidate has already been beatified, and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints has already certified the authenticity of a subsequent miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession.

The candidates whose dossiers will be brought before the consistory are:

1. Filippo Giacomo Amoroso (1715-1787), an Italian Capuchin monk, while illiterate, was known in his time as known for his mastery of "the science of charity and humility." He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.
2. Joseph Bilczewski (1860-1923) was the Latin-rite Archbishop of Lviv, Ukraine. During World War I and the subsequent rise of the Soviet Union, he was a rallying point for religious believers in the face of atheistic rule.
3. Sigismond Gorazdowski (1845-1920), a priest of the same Lviv archdiocese, edited a popular catechism and founded a magazine to promote the faith; he was also a founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph.
4. Gaetano Catanoso (1879- 1963) was a priest of the Archdiocese of Reggio Calabria-Bova in southern Italy, and founder of the Veronica Sisters of the Holy Face.
5. Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga (1901-1952), a Jesuit priest whose life was dedicated to teaching and apostolate among the poor of Chile. He would become the second Chilean saint, after St. Therese of the Andes, canonized in 1993. During a meeting with Chile's foreign minister Ignacio Walker Prieto last October, Pope John Paul reportedly suggested that the canonization was likely take place in May 2005.