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Pope Leo XIV delivers his homily during the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity and the Jubilee of Sport on June 15, 2025, in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, Jun 20, 2025 / 12:41 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV on Friday declared 174 new martyrs, including 50 French Catholics who died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II and more than 100 Spanish priests killed during the Spanish Civil War.

In a decree signed on June 20, the pope also recognized a medical miracle that occurred in 2007 in a Rhode Island hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit through the heavenly intercession of a 19th-century Spanish priest, Father Salvador Valera Parra, making possible his future beatification.

Faith and resistance: The young French martyrs of World War II 

The French martyrs declared Friday died between 1944 and 1945, many after being arrested by the Nazi regime for their ministry and resistance efforts under German occupation.

Among them were Father Raimond Cayré, a 28-year-old diocesan priest who died of typhus in Buchenwald in October 1944; Father Gerard Martin Cendrier, a 24-year-old Franciscan who perished in the same camp in January 1945; Roger Vallée, a 23-year-old seminarian who died in Mauthausen in October 1944; and Jean Mestre, a 19-year-old lay member of the Young Christian Workers, who was killed in Gestapo custody in May 1944.

They were part of a broader network of clergy, religious, and Catholic laity (particularly laity affiliated with Catholic Action movements) who clandestinely accompanied French forced laborers into Germany after the Vichy regime’s Service du Travail Obligatoire was enacted in 1943. Some were tortured and killed by the Nazis because of their apostolate in Germany, while others died “ex aerumis caceris,” or because of their suffering in prison.

Most of the 50 martyrs died in camps like Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Dachau, and Zöschen, often succumbing to typhus, tuberculosis, or brutal execution. They included four Franciscans, nine diocesan priests, three seminarians, 14 Catholic Scouts, 19 members of the Young Christian Workers, and one Jesuit.

The majority of these French martyrs (more than 80%) were under the age of 30 when they died. The youngest of the Catholics Scouts, aged 21 and 22, were both executed — one by gunfire at Buchenwald and the other by beheading in Dresden in 1944.

According to the Vatican, their persecution was rooted in “odium fidei,” or hatred of the faith. The martyrs’ “apostolic action” and their willingness to die rather than abandon their spiritual duties were seen as a direct affront to the totalitarian and anti-Christian ideology of the Nazi regime.

The martyrs of the Spanish Civil War 

The pope also declared 124 martyrs from the Spanish Civil War, all from the Diocese of Jaén, killed between 1936 and 1938. They included 109 diocesan priests, one religious sister, and 14 lay Catholics.

The Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints divided them into two martyr groups for their records: Father Manuel Izquierdo Izquierdo and 58 companions and Father Antonio Montañés Chiquero and 64 companions.

Their martyrdom occurred in the context of widespread anticlerical violence during Spain’s civil war, when many revolutionaries, fueled by atheist propaganda, desecrated churches and executed religious leaders. According to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, their deaths, marked by “anti-religious and anti-Christian sentiments” of the guerrillas, fit the Church’s criteria for martyrdom in “odium fidei.” 

In response to the news, Bishop Sebastián Chico Martínez of Jaén said: “These lands have been blessed and watered throughout the centuries of Christianity by the blood and witness of martyrs … their sowing has been fruitful in new Christians and will continue to be so.” 

The martyrs from the Diocese of Jaén are the latest of a total of more than 2,000 martyrs from the Spanish Civil War already recognized by the Church and beatified under the pontificates of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis.  

The new Spanish martyrs’ beatification ceremony will take place in Jaén on a date to be determined.

Miracle in Rhode Island opens path to beatification 

The pope also approved a miraculous healing attributed to the intercession of Father Salvador Valera Parra, a 19th-century Spanish priest known for his charity during epidemics and natural disasters in Almería. He can now be beatified, thanks to an inexplicable healing that occurred in Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 2007. 

Born in 1816, Valera Parra had a childhood marked by profound faith. When his father died, 13-year-old Salvador was seen kneeling before the body reciting the Divine Office alone. The Spanish diocesan priest is remembered for many works of charity, including founding, along with St. Teresa Jornet, a home for the elderly.

The miracle involved a premature infant named Tyquan who was delivered by emergency cesarean section after complications during labor in 2007. Born without signs of life and suffering from severe oxygen deprivation, the baby showed no improvement after an hour. The attending Spanish physician, a devotee of Servant of God Salvador Valera Parra, prayed for his intercession. Moments later, the child’s heart began to beat.

Despite doctors’ expectations of lifelong neurological damage, Tyquan developed normally, growing into a healthy, active child.

4 declared venerable for heroic virtue 

In the audience with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Pope Leo XIV also recognized the heroic virtue of four individuals, declaring them venerable. They are:

— João Luiz Pozzobon (1904–1985), a Brazilian deacon and father of seven known for his Marian devotion and founding the Schoenstatt Movement’s Pilgrim Mother Rosary Campaign, which is now present in more than 100 countries

— Anna Fulgida Bartolacelli (1923–1993), an Italian laywoman who suffered from dwarfism and rickets and was a consecrated member of the Silent Workers of the Cross, living a life of hidden sanctity and service to the sick

— Raffaele Mennella (1877–1898), a young Italian cleric of the Missionaries of the Sacred Hearts, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 21

— Teresa Tambelli (1884–1964), a Daughter of Charity known for her long ministry to the poor in Cagliari, Italy

Sister Maria Zhang made her perpetual vows as an Augustinian Recollect on May 13, 2025. / Credit: Diocese of Salamanca

Madrid, Spain, Jun 20, 2025 / 10:29 am (CNA).

Sister Maria Zhang Yue Chun made her perpetual vows on May 13 at the convent of the Augustinian Recollects in Vitigudino, Salamanca province, Spain. Her prioress, Sister Berta, said she is “an example” for her community.

Born in Shangqiu, Henan province, China, Maria lived without any connection to Catholicism. She was married and took care of her five children. During a serious illness, however, the support provided to her by a community of active Augustinian Recollects opened her eyes to the faith.

On July 1, 2007, she was baptized along with her four daughters. Her husband and son followed in her footsteps at Christmas that year. The following year, Maria was widowed. One by one, her daughters joined a community of Augustinian nuns who have had a presence in the Asian country since 1931. This past April 25, her only son was ordained an Augustinian priest.

Ever since her husband’s death, Maria felt a strong calling to live her faith more radically as a contemplative nun. However, in China, the Augustinian nuns do not have a community of this nature.

Thus, in 2015, Maria left her native country ready to fulfill the vocation to which she was being called. She was especially helped in this endeavor by one of her daughters, who is also part of an Augustinian community in Spain.

But it wasn’t easy. Despite her family background full of considerable and evident spiritual merits, various communities turned her down, primarily due to her age (56 at the time) and because she didn’t know Spanish.

However, with the support of a Chinese priest and making use of an electronic translator, she arrived at the Vitigudino convent. The prioress, Sister Berta Feijó, recounted to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, what that first contact was like when she was allowed to experience religious life within the convent.

“Little by little, she learned the essentials for our contemplative life and adapted,” Sister Berta said. “What we observed in her is that she was always smiling and happy.”

The prioress, originally from Peru, said Sister Maria “is an example for the community of a dedicated life, of recollection, of a sisterhood also because she is eager to serve,” especially the older sisters of the convent, all of whom are in their 90s.

The community currently consists of 16 sisters from four different continents: Five are Spanish, seven are from Tanzania, and the rest are from Guatemala, Peru, Venezuela, and China.

Despite the obvious language difficulties, Sister Berta recalled that Sister Maria was determined: “She never flinched, she never seemed sad, nor did she ever complain about anything, always happy to this day.” So much so that the first thing she learned to say in Spanish was that “she’s happy.”

Maria took the white veil for novices in 2017 and three years later made her temporary vows in a ceremony accompanied by one of her daughters, Sister Maria Sun Shen, who sang to the Virgin in her native language at the end of the Mass.

This past May 13, after publicly expressing her total devotion and invoking the saints with the litany, Sister Maria prostrated herself on the floor as a sign of humility while two sisters covered her with rose petals.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.