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Martyrs of Damascus Among New Saints

This World Mission Sunday, Pope Francis will canonize 14 new saints in St. Peter’s Square, and he wants people to get familiar with them. World Mission Sunday is a popular day for the pope to declare new saints and honor men and women who spent their lives in mission territories. In anticipation of the event, the Pope has invited all Catholic church members to "learn about these new saints and ask for their intercession." 

All 14 people had unique vocations and life stories as witnesses to holiness. Among the 14, two were married fathers, three were founders of generational religious orders, eight Franciscan friars and three marionettes who were martyred in Syria in 1860. “They are a clear testimony of the Holy Spirit’s action in the life of the Church,” the pope said. Pope Francis expressed his desire for the congregation to appreciate the heroics of the soon-to-be saints. 

The biographies of the Blessed break down their spiritual legacies worldwide. One of the Fathers, Giuseppe Allamano, will be recognized for a medical miracle: the healing of a man attacked by a jaguar in the Amazon rainforest. According to the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, six Consolata missionary sisters waited with the man’s wife and prayed over the man with a relic of Blessed Allamano. Only ten days after his operation, he woke up without any long-term health problems or neurological damage. While not household names yet, the martyrs killed in Syria are known as the "Martyrs of Damascus." 

The 11 martyrs were killed because they chose not to convert to Islam and were murdered "out of hatred for the faith." According to an account by ACI Mena, one of the martyrs, Francis Massabki, told his fellow brothers, "As Christians, we do not fear those who kill the body, as the Lord Jesus said.” The martyrs faced a brutal death. Many will commemorate these deaths and celebrate their new sainthood this weekend.
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