JOHN PAUL II CANONIZES 12 BLESSEDS

VATICAN CITY, NOV 21, 1999 (VIS) - In the Vatican Basilica today, Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe, the Pope canonized 12 Blesseds: Cirilo Bertran and eight companions, and Inocencio de la Inmaculada, all martyrs; and Benedetto Menni and Tommaso da Cori. In his homily he said that they "show us the path we must follow in order to arrive prepared at the Great Jubilee of the year 2000."

Brother Bertran and his eight companions, "of the Brothers of Christian Schools from the College of Our Lady of Covadonga, Spain," affirmed the Holy Father, "having been born in Spain and, one of them, in Argentina, crowned their lives with martyrdom in Turon, Spain, in 1934, together with the Passionist, Fr. Inocencio de la Inmaculada."

"As witnesses testify," he continued, "all of them prepared for death ... without disguising their identity as religious. ... They were not heroes of a human war in which they did not participate, rather they were educators of youth."

Referring to Benedetto Menni, priest of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God, he indicated that "his spirituality welled from his personal experience of God's love for him. Greatly devoted to the Heart of Jesus, King of heaven and earth, and to the Virgin Mary, he found in them the strength for his charitable commitment to others, especially the suffering, the old, children with scrofula and polio and the mentally infirm."

John Paul II said that Tommaso da Cori, priest of the Order of Friars Minor, "was obedient to Christ, King of the Universe. He meditated upon, and embodied in his own existence, the evangelical requirement of poverty and giving oneself to God and to others."

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