VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis recognized the martyrdom of an Italian missionary killed in Myanmar and seven Romanian Catholic bishops – one of whom was secretly named a cardinal by St. Paul VI – persecuted during the communist era.
Pope Francis also advanced the sainthood causes of six other candidates during a meeting March 19 with Cardinal Angelo Becciu, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes.
Among the decrees the pope signed was one recognizing the miracle needed for the beatification of Mother Maria Emilia Riquelme Zayas, who founded the Missionary Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and Mary Immaculate. She was born in 1847 in Granada, Spain, and died there in 1940.
The pope recognized the martyrdom of Father Alfredo Cremonesi, a member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, who worked nearly 30 years in the mountains of Myanmar, then known as Burma, despite periods of intense hardship and conflict.
Born in 1902, the priest went by boat to Burma to serve the Karen people living in isolated villages. He survived the same difficulties as the people when Japanese troops occupied the nation during World War II and he refused to leave when Karen guerillas launched a rebellion against the new government formed when the nation achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1948.
Pope Francis recognized the martyrdom of seven bishops of the Eastern-rite Romanian Catholic Church, who died during a fierce anti-religious campaign waged under the communist regime in Romania, which was then violently overthrown in 1989. The pope is set to visit Romania May 31-June 2.
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