Pope makes saints of victims of 15th century massacre

The Martyrs of Otranto are 813 Italians slain in the city in 1480 for defying demands by Turkish invaders to renounce Christianity.

The pope also gave Colombia its first saint: a nun, Laura of St Catherine of Siena Montoya y Upegui, who journeyed with five other women by horseback in 1914 into the forests to be a teacher and spiritual guide to indigenous people. Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos Calderon, attended the ceremony.

The first pontiff from South America also canonised another Latin American woman. Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala, a Mexican who dedicated herself to nursing the sick, helped Catholics avoid persecution during a government crackdown on the faith in the 1920s.

Also known as Mother Lupita, she hid the Guadalajara archbishop in an eye clinic for more than a year after fearful local Catholic families refused to shelter him.

The new saints were all approved for canonisation in a decree read by Pope Benedict XVI on February 11 during the same ceremony in which he announced he was resigning as pontiff.

Benedict, the first pope to retire in 600 years, is now living in a monastery in the Vatican grounds.

Francis told the crowd that the martyrs are a source of inspiration, especially for “so many Christians, who, in these times and in so many parts of the world, still suffer violence”. He prayed they had “the courage of loyalty and to respond to evil with good”.

The pope did not single out any country. But Christian churches have been attacked in Nigeria and Iraq, and Catholics in China loyal to the Vatican have been subject to harassment and sometimes jail in recent decades.

Francis, the first pope from the Jesuit order, which is known for its missionary zeal, praised the Colombian saint for “instilling hope” in the indigenous people.