sainthood

BY SIMON CALDWELL
ThE POPE is to recognise two of the most prominent religious figures of the 20th century as saints, it has been announced.
John Paul II will canonise Blessed Josemaria Escriva, the Spanish founder of the Opus Dei personal prelature, and Blessed Padre Pio, an Italian Franciscan friar who received the stigmata, the Vatican has said.
The Pope will also canonise Blessed Juan Diego, the Aztec visited by Our Lady at Guadalupe, Mexico, on three separate occasion in 1531, triggering the conversion of almost the entire Indian nation.
Cardinals of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints decided at a meeting this month that they would recognise miracles attributed to the three men, allowing them to be declared saints.
As The Catholic Hetyild went to press, it was still unclear when precisely the canonisations would take place.
Escriva, whose movement now has 80,000 fiillowers worldwide, was born in Barbastro in northern Spain in 1902, he died in Rome in 1975. He was beatified in 1992.
Pio was treated as a saint by millions during his lifetime. His funeral was attended by an estimated 100,000 people when he died aged 81 years in 1968.
He was beatified in 1999, and his recognition as a saint in the space ofjust two years is among the most rapid in the history of the Church.
The commission's findings was scheduled to be placed before the Pope on December 20 for his approval.