Audrey Toguchi, 80, Hawaii walks during a canonization ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica at the...
Audrey Toguchi, 80, Hawaii walks during a canonization ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009. Pope Benedict XVI gave the Roman Catholic church five new saints including Father Damien, born as Jozef De Veuster in 1840, a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium who cared for leprosy victims on Molokai from 1873 to 1889, when the disease killed him. Pope Benedict XVI decided that Toguchi's apparently inexplicable healing from what doctors had described as terminal cancer was a miracle wrought through Damien's intercession. The others new Saints are Zygmunt Szczesny Felinski, Francisco Coll y Guitart, Rafael Arnaiz Baron, Marie de la Croix (Jeanne) Jugan. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
(AP)
A 19th-century priest whose courageous work with leprosy patients in Hawaii has been likened to the efforts of those battling the stigma of AIDS was elevated to sainthood Sunday by Pope Benedict XVI, along with four other Catholics he hailed as heroes of holiness.
Among the 10,000 pilgrims packing St. Peter's Basilica was Hawaii resident Audrey Toguchi, an 80-year-old retired school teacher whose recovery from lung cancer a decade ago stunned her doctor and was ruled a miracle by the Vatican.
Toguchi has credited her survival to praying to Belgium-born Jozef De Veuster, also known as Father Damien, who himself died from leprosy in 1889 after contracting the disease while working with ostracized patients living on Molokai island.
Some 40,000 faithful who couldn't fit inside the vast church filled St. Peter's Square on a warm, sunny morning. Many women from Hawaii wore headpieces made of roses and large beaded necklaces over floral-print loose gowns.
Among the five Benedict added to the church's roll call of saints is French nun Jeanne Jugan, who helped the elderly, including some abandoned by their families. Jugan, also known as Marie de la Croix, was "an authentic Mother Teresa ahead of her time," Vatican Radio said. Her Little Sisters of the Poor order of nuns today runs homes for impoverished old people worldwide. She died in 1879.
Toguchi and her doctor, Walter Chang, joined in one basilica procession, and two leprosy patients participated in another.
The new saints had heeded Jesus' call to "the heroism of sanctity," sacrificing themselves for others without "calculation or personal gain," the pope said.
"Their perfection, in the logic of a faith that is humanly incomprehensible at times, consists in no longer placing themselves at the center, but choosing to go against the flow and live according to the Gospel," Benedict said in his homily.
Official delegations included King Albert II and Queen Paolo of Belgium; U.S. President Barack Obama's new envoy to the Vatican, Miguel H. Diaz; and Hawaii Sen. Daniel Kahikina Akaka. Poland's president, France's prime minister and Spain's foreign minister also attended.
