Pope Leo XIV on Sunday proclaimed seven new saints before a crowd of 70,000 people in St. Peter’s Square, describing the new saints as “authentic” men and women of faith.

The canonization of the new saints coincided with World Mission Sunday.

According to a post on CBCP News, the official news service of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, the new saints included Venezuela and Papua New Guinea’s first-ever saints and an ex-Satanist who underwent a dramatic conversion.

“Today we have before us seven witnesses, the new saints, who with God’s grace, kept the lamp of faith burning. Indeed, they themselves became lamps capable of spreading the light of Christ,” Pope Leo XIV said in his homily on Oct. 19 in the Vatican.

He described the seven new saints as “not heroes or champions of some ideal, but authentic men and women.”

“May their intercession assist us in our trials and their example inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness,” Pope Leo XIV added.

During the ceremony held in St. Peter’s Square, the pontiff read the canonization proclamations after Cardinal Marcello Semeraro shared the stories of the new saints.

Two of the new saints came from Venezuela – St. José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, a doctor who served the poor, and St. María del Carmen Rendiles Martínez, a religious sister born without her left arm who founded the Servants of Jesus in Caracas in 1965.

Papua New Guinea also earned its first saint – St. Peter To Rot, a lay catechist who was martyred during World War II.

Another martyr came from Armenia – St. Ignatius Maloyan, an Armenian Catholic archbishop who was executed during the Armenian genocide after he refused to convert to Islam.

Also canonized was St. Bartolo Longo, a 19th-century Italian lawyer who abandoned the faith for Satanism before eventually returning to the Church to dedicate his life to promoting the rosary.

St. Vincenza Maria Poloni, the founder of the Sisters of Mercy of Verona, was canonized for her selfless service to the poor, even if it meant risking her life during the 1836 cholera epidemic.

St. Maria Troncatti, an Italian Salesian sister who served as a missionary among the Shuar people in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest for 44 years, was also proclaimed a saint. — With a report from Reuters/JMA, GMA Integrated News