VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV will finally canonize Venezuela’s beloved “doctor of the poor” Sunday, offering the Caribbean nation its first saint and a reason to celebrate amid its years-long economic crisis and new tensions with the United States.
José Gregorio Hernández, revered by millions for his dedication to poor people, will be canonized alongside Mother Carmen Rendiles Martínez, the founder of a Venezuelan religious order, at a Mass in St. Peter’s Square.
Thousands of Venezuelans are expected to attend, and thousands more who couldn’t travel to Rome will mark the occasion in Caracas, where the Vatican service will be livestreamed early Sunday morning at a downtown plaza.
The Mass will also give Papua New Guinea its first saint: Peter To Rot, a layman killed in prison in 1945 for standing up for monogamous marriage at a time when polygamy was practiced. In all, seven people will be canonized in a ceremony that Pope Francis put in motion in some of his final acts as pope.
In fact, Francis approved Hernández’s canonization from his hospital room on Feb. 24, agreeing to bypass the Vatican’s typical miracle confirmation process and pronounce him a saint based on the “widespread veneration of the ‘doctor-saint’ among the faithful,” the Vatican said.
Hernández is beloved among Venezuelans, with his face plastered on street art around Caracas, in portraits in hospitals and in photos gracing individual home altars.
As a doctor in Caracas during the late 1800s and early 1900s, he refused to take money from poor people for his services and often gave them money for medicine, earning the nickname “doctor of the poor.” He was killed in 1919 while crossing a street shortly after picking up some medicine at a pharmacy to bring to a poor elderly woman.
He became a religious icon after his death, and when Pope John Paul II visited Venezuela in February 1996, he received a petition signed by 5 million people — almost one in four Venezuelans — asking that he declare Hernández a saint.
“For them, this is indeed a national event of the highest order,” said Silvia Correale, who spearheaded his sainthood case. “Certainly, the canonization of José Gregorio is desired by all the Venezuelan people, and has been waited for by all the people.”
Arquímides Blanco, 60, said he wasn’t a particular fan of Hernández but recognized the significance of his canonization for Venezuela now. Blanco was a member of a cultural collective commissioned to paint the streets surrounding the church of the emblematic parish of La Pastora, as part of the preparations for the canonization.
“I may not be a big fan of José Gregorio as such, but I understand that he is Venezuelan and that his canonization in the context of the whole geopolitical situation is important,” he said.
The canonization is a long-awaited celebration and a boost for Venezuela, just weeks after Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize. It comes as tensions mount with the United States over Washington’s use of military force against suspected drug cartels.
Just this past week, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing the execution of land operations in the South American country.
Venezuela’s economy has been in crisis for the past decade, spurring the emigration of millions of Venezuelans, first to other South American nations and then, in more recent years, to the United States.
The country’s economic disaster has been compounded by U.S. sanctions. The government of President Nicólas Maduro – sworn in last year despite credible evidence he lost reelection — has been forced to cut subsidies, making many daily necessities unaffordable to the 80% of residents estimated to live in poverty.
Also being canonized Sunday are Archbishop Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, an Armenian Catholic who was killed for refusing to renounce his faith during what the Vatican has said was the Ottoman era genocide of Armenians; Sister Vincenza Maria Poloni, a 19th century founder of a religious order; Maria Troncatti, an Italian missionary in Ecuador, and Bartolo Longo, who like Hernandez will be canonized based on widespread veneration among the faithful, not a purported miraculous healing.
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Arraez reproted from Caracas, Venezuela. Associated Press visual journalists Silvia Stellacci and Maria Selene Clemente in Vatican City contributed to this report.
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