Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints Sunday, including Portugal’s 14th century independence leader and a nearly blind Italian monk who died of the plague after tending to the sick.
Benedict presided over the ceremony in a packed St. Peter’s Square, decorated with tapestries featuring pictures of each of the five. He praised each as a model for the faithful and said their lives and work were as relevant today as they were some 700 years ago.
Benedict singled out the Rev. Arcangelo Tadini, who lived at the turn of the last century and founded an order of nuns to tend to factory workers at the dawn of the industrial era. Tadini also created an association to provide emergency loans to workers experiencing financial difficulties.
Looking at the photo made me wonder when Benedict gave up both JPII’s strange pontifical crucifix and that distinctive, almost Eastern pallium he wore his first year. Did he get flack from the Orthodox on the latter?
He gave up using JP2’s (and Paul VI’s) crucifix at least a year ago, during his trip to America, if not longer ago. I’m not aware of any “eastern flack” he got; the papal MC said that the “almost Eastern” pallium was replaced for a different form of the pallium (historically located between the development of the “almost Eastern” and the modern palliums) because the “almost Eastern” one was too awkward a match with Western vestments.