Pope Leo XIV on Sunday canonized seven new saints, including an Italian lawyer who left Satanism to become one of Catholicism’s most devoted champions of the rosary.

Born in 1841, Bartolo Longo abandoned his Catholic upbringing during his university years, eventually becoming deeply involved in occult practices and even being “ordained” as a Satanic priest. After renouncing Satanism, Longo experienced what he described as a profound spiritual awakening that led him back to the Catholic Church. 

He dedicated the remainder of his life — until his death in 1926 — to promoting devotion to the rosary, and he founded the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii, which remains a major pilgrimage destination today.

“Today we have before us seven witnesses, the new Saints, who, with God’s grace, kept the lamp of faith burning,” Pope Leo told an estimated 70,000 people gathered at St. Peter’s Square. “Indeed, they themselves became lamps capable of spreading the light of Christ. … May their intercession assist us in our trials and their example inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness.”

The canonization ceremony was Pope Leo’s second since becoming the first American pontiff in May. Bells rang across St. Peter’s Square as portraits of the seven new saints were unfurled from the basilica’s facade.

In his homily, Pope Leo emphasized the importance of faith in a modern world. “A world without faith, then, would be populated by children living without a Father, that is, by creatures without salvation,” he said.

The other six people canonized alongside Longo represent diverse corners of the Catholic world and different paths to sainthood.

Papua New Guinea’s first saint, Peter To Rot, was a lay catechist martyred during the Japanese occupation in World War II. He died defending Christian marriage after refusing to accept the occupiers’ permission for polygamy.

Armenian Catholic Archbishop Ignatius Choukrallah Maloyan was executed during the 1915 Armenian genocide after refusing to convert to Islam. Before his death, he declared: “I consider the shedding of my blood for my faith to be the sweetest desire of my heart,” the Catholic News Agency reported.

Venezuela celebrated two of its own being elevated to sainthood, the first saints from that nation. Known as “the doctor of the poor,” José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros served Venezuela’s most vulnerable until his death in 1919. The founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus in Caracas in 1965, María del Carmen Rendiles Martínez, who was born without a left arm, becomes Venezuela’s first female saint.

Two Italian nuns completed the list of new saints. Vincenza Maria Poloni founded the Sisters of Mercy of Verona and risked her life serving victims during the 1836 cholera epidemic. Maria Troncatti spent 44 years as a Salesian missionary among Ecuador’s indigenous Shuar people in the Amazon rainforest, earning the affectionate title “Madrecita,” or little mother, Catholic Culture reported.

The prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, read profiles of each new saint to enthusiastic applause from the crowd before Pope Leo officially declared them saints by reading the canonization formula.

The timing of the ceremony, coinciding with World Mission Sunday, carried special significance. Pope Leo, a former Augustinian missionary in Peru, urged prayers for modern missionaries. “The Church is entirely missionary, but today we pray especially for those men and women who left everything to bring the Gospel to those who do not know it,” he said.

After the service, Pope Leo traveled beyond the square’s confines in his Popemobile, blessing crowds along the Via della Conciliazione and stopping frequently to bless babies held up by well-wishers.

Pope Leo XIV has now canonized nine saints. That’s compared to 898 individuals whom Pope Francis venerated to sainthood during his seven years as pontiff and 482 saints venerated by Pope John Paul II during his 27-year papacy. The Catholic Church has named more than 10,000 saints.