VATICAN (CNS): Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes five people.
In a July 10 meeting with Giovanni Angelo Cardinal Becciu, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, the pope recognised a miracle attributed to Maria Antonia Sama, clearing the way for her beatification.
Sama was born into a poor family in the Italian region of Calabria in 1875. At the age of 11, while returning home from washing clothes near a river, Sama drank from a nearby water puddle.
At home, she became immobile and experienced convulsions, which led many during that time to believe she was possessed by evil spirits, according to the official website of Sama’s sainthood cause.
After an unsuccessful exorcism at a Carthusian monastery, she only began to stand and showed signs of healing after a reliquary containing the remains of St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusian order, was placed before her.
The healing was short-lived and she was afflicted with arthritis, leaving her bedridden for the next 60 years. The people of her town cared for her after the death of her mother.
The Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart then cared for Sama until her death in 1953 at the age of 78.
The other decrees include the heroic virtues of Italian Jesuit Father Eusebio Francesco Chini, a missionary in 18th-century Mexico. He was born in 1645 and died in Magdalena, Mexico, in 1711; Father Mariano Jose de Ibarguengoitia y Zuloaga, from Bilbao, Spain, who help found the Institute of the Servants of Jesus. He was born in 1815 and died in 1888; Mother Maria Felix Torres, founder of the Company of the Saviour as well as the Mater Salvatoris Schools. She was born Albelda, Spain, in 1907 and died in Madrid in 2001; Angiolino Bonetta, a layman and member of the Silent Workers of the Cross Association, an apostolate dedicated to the sick and the disabled. He was born in 1948 and died in 1963.
