Pope Francis signed a decree clearing the way for the canonization of Canada-born Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis, founder of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The grisly murders of missionary priests and a local priest, a lay volunteer and 40 seminarians in Burundi are the focus of a recently opened investigation into their sainthood cause.

VATICAN CITY - A plump, elderly, smiling Italian of peasant origins, Pope John XXIII brought a humble yet charismatic, personal style to the papacy. He placed great importance on his modest upbringing in a village about 40 km northeast of Milan, saying: “I come from the country, from poverty,” adding it was a “happy and blessed poverty — not cursed, not endured.”

TORONTO - When Grace Esquega, director of the Blessed Kateri Mission at the Kitchitwa Kateri Anamewgamik parish in Thunder Bay, Ont., heard that her beloved Kateri Tekakwitha was going to become a saint, she cried.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Esquega says. “When somebody else told me, I had to see it for myself on the news.”

Esquega is one of 70 people heading on a pilgrimage to Rome in October organized through St. Ann’s parish in Toronto, home of the Native Peoples’ Mission of Canada, for the canonization of the native girl exiled from her home because of her devotion to Jesus Christ.