Pope gives Venezuela reason to celebrate by canonizing its beloved
'doctor of the poor' as 1st saint
[October 20, 2025]
By NICOLE WINFIELD and JORGE RUEDA
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV canonized Venezuela’s beloved “doctor
of the poor” Sunday before tens of thousands of people, offering the
South American nation its first saint and a reason to celebrate amid a
yearslong economic crisis and new tensions with the United States.
José Gregorio Hernández, revered by millions for his dedication to poor
people, was declared a saint alongside the founder of a Venezuelan
religious order, Mother Carmen Rendiles Martínez, at a Mass in St.
Peter’s Square that Leo called a “great celebration of holiness.”
Thousands of jubilant Venezuelans filled the square and draped
Venezuelan flags on its police barricades, adding splashes of red, blue
and yellow that perfectly matched the uniforms of the attending Swiss
Guards.
Thousands more who couldn't travel to Rome gathered overnight in the
Caracas plaza outside the Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria church, where
a 26-foot (8 meter) statue of Hernández stands, and watched the Mass
from Rome on a giant screen.
“It’s good news after so much sadness,” said Ana Sanabria, a 71-year-old
homemaker, as she watched the fireworks in Caracas.
The Mass, which the Vatican said drew some 70,000 people, also gave
Papua New Guinea its first saint: Peter To Rot, a layman killed in
prison in 1945 for standing up for monogamous marriage at a time when
polygamy was practiced. In all, seven people were canonized in a
ceremony that Pope Francis put in motion in some of his final acts as
pope.
In fact, Francis approved Hernández’s canonization from his hospital
room on Feb. 24, agreeing to bypass the Vatican’s typical miracle
confirmation process to pronounce him a saint based on the “widespread
veneration of the ‘doctor-saint’ among the faithful,” the Vatican said.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro thanked Francis for intervening,
after years of petitions from ordinary faithful and the Venezuelan
Catholic hierarchy.
“Today we have raised a prayer for the eternal spirit of he who is going
to be a saint, also for Pope Francis, who gave this beautiful gift to
Venezuela,” he said in Caracas after the Mass.
A beloved doctor and an icon after death
Hernández is beloved among Venezuelans, with his face plastered on
street art around Caracas, in portraits in hospitals and in photos
gracing individual home altars.
As a doctor in Caracas during the late 1800s and early 1900s, he refused
to take money from poor people for his services and often gave them
money for medicine, earning the nickname “doctor of the poor.” He was
killed in a road accident in 1919 while crossing a street shortly after
picking up some medicine at a pharmacy to bring to a poor elderly woman.
He became a religious icon after his death, and when Pope John Paul II
visited Venezuela in 1996, he received a petition signed by 5 million
people — almost one in four Venezuelans — asking that he declare
Hernández a saint.
“For them, this is indeed a national event of the highest order," said
Silvia Correale, who spearheaded his sainthood case. “Certainly, the
canonization of José Gregorio is desired by all the Venezuelan people,
and has been waited for by all the people.”
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Pope Leo XIV tours on his popemobile after presiding over a Mass in
St. Peter's Square at the Vatican during which he canonized seven
new saints of the Catholic Church, Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025. (AP
Photo/Andrew Medichini)
José Ramon Malavecontreras, a Venezuelan resident in Rome, said his
mother named him after Hernández.
“They believed I’d be stillborn, so she dedicated his name to me for
saving my life," he said Sunday in St. Peter's. "Therefore, this
moment was unmissable for me. I couldn’t fail to be here.”
In Caracas, Arquímides Blanco, 60, said he wasn’t a particular fan
of Hernández but recognized the significance of his canonization for
Venezuela now. Blanco belongs to a cultural collective commissioned
to paint the streets ahead of the canonization.
“I may not be a big fan of José Gregorio as such, but I understand
that he is Venezuelan and that his canonization in the context of
the whole geopolitical situation is important,” he said.
A celebration amid tensions
The canonization was a long-awaited celebration and a boost for
Venezuela, just weeks after Venezuelan opposition leader María
Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize. It comes as tensions mount
with the United States over Washington’s use of military force
against suspected drug cartels.
Just this past week, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that he
authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and
said he was weighing the execution of land operations in the South
American country.
Venezuela’s economy has been in crisis for the past decade,
compounded by U.S. sanctions and spurring the emigration of millions
of Venezuelans, first to other South American nations and then, in
more recent years, to the United States.
The government of Maduro – sworn in last year despite credible
evidence he lost reelection — has been forced to cut subsidies,
making many daily necessities unaffordable to the 80% of residents
estimated to live in poverty.
Other new saints
In his homily, Leo held up all seven new saints as models for
today's Catholics who carried "the lamp of the faith."
“May their intercession assist us in our trials and their example
inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness,” he said.
Also canonized Sunday were Archbishop Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan,
an Armenian Catholic who was killed for refusing to renounce his
faith during what the Vatican has said was the Ottoman era genocide
of Armenians; Sister Vincenza Maria Poloni, a 19th century founder
of a religious order; Sister Maria Troncatti, an Italian missionary
in Ecuador; and Bartolo Longo, who like Hernandez was canonized
based on widespread veneration among the faithful, not a purported
miraculous healing.
___
Rueda contributed from Caracas, Venezuela. Juan Arraez in Caracas,
and Luigi Navarra, Silvia Stellacci and Maria Selene Clemente in
Vatican City contributed to this report.
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