Two new saints for Central America

ID Pedro de Betancur, a 17th century Franciscan brother, Guatemala's first saint was Pope John Paul's 463rd canonisation in his 23-year papacy. A native of Spain's Canary Islands, Pedro devoted his life to working with the poor, the ill and abandoned children in Guatemala. He originally wanted to be a priest but failed at his studies so joined a lay order of the Franciscans. He also founded the world's first hospital for convalescents, and established the House of Our Lady of Bethlehem, which grew into the Bethlemite religious order. In elevating Pedro de San Jose Betancur to sainthood, the pontiff said the Pedro's example "should inspire in Christians and in all citizens a desire to transform the human community into a great family, in which social, political and economic relations may be worthy of man".
,D Juan Diego has become the Church's first indigenous American saint. The legend of Juan Diego states that the Virgin of Guadalupe, the dark-skinned mother of Jesus who appeared from heaven and asked for a church to be built for her people in 1531, a decade after the Spanish conquest of Mexico and fall of the Aztec empire. Juan Diego was her chosen messenger, a humble Indian on whose cloak she miraculously imprinted her image to persuade a sceptical Spanish bishop, the image around which the basilica is built. To canonise Juan Diego, the Vatican had to certify a miracle, and ruled that the recovery of a young Mexico City man from massive head and spinal injuries in a three-story suicidal plunge was due to his mother's prayers to the Indian.