For Francisco Rico-Martinez, Archbishop Oscar Romero may well be the saint of silence.

VATICAN – During a brief ceremony in the Vatican Gardens, Pope Francis blessed a new statue of a 10th-century Armenian monk he had declared a "doctor of the church" in 2015.

VATICAN – Pope Francis has cleared the way for the canonizations of Blesseds Paul VI and Oscar Romero.

VATICAN – While Pope Francis thinks Blessed Paul VI wrote "the greatest pastoral document that has ever been written," great writing does not make a pope a saint.

NEW YORK – The case involving the transfer of the remains of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen from New York to Peoria, Illinois, has been sent back to the original court by the New York Court of Appeals for an evidentiary hearing.

VATICAN – In his daily homily Thursday Pope Francis drew a distinction between the biblical figures of David and his son Solomon, saying that, like David, sinners who repent are still able to become saints, but the corrupt will not achieve holiness.

OTTAWA – Nearly 80,000 people across Canada thronged to see the relic of St. Francis Xavier that made a coast-to-coast pilgrimage Dec. 26-Feb. 3.

VATICAN – Pope Francis has recognized the martyrdom of a bishop, seven Trappist monks and 11 other religious men and women killed by extremists in Algeria in the 1990s.

VATICAN – Inviting all faithful to practice Christian love every day, Pope Francis on Sunday canonized 35 new saints, nearly all of them martyrs, holding them up as models who “point the way”. 

MANILA, Philippines – Brother Richie Fernando was a 26 year-old Jesuit seminarian from the Philippines when in 1996 he died protecting his Cambodian students from a hand grenade.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis on Friday approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Hanna Chrzanowska, a Polish nurse and nursing instructor who died from cancer in 1973, paving the way for her beatification.

The Church, like the world, needs heroes. We call them saints, people of heroic virtue who walk humbly and faithfully in the footsteps of Jesus.

Cardinal Thomas Collins believes the Archdiocese of Toronto’s founding bishop was a martyr and is a saint. On the occasion of the archdiocese’s 175th anniversary, Collins announced he plans to begin the process that could make it official.

Dorothy Day is alleged to have said: “Don’t call me a saint; I don’t want to be dismissed that easily!”

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of Wisconsin-born Capuchin Father Solanus Casey, five religious, four laypeople and two cardinals, including Vietnamese Cardinal Francois Nguyen Van Thuan.