Pedro Calungsod to be proclaimed saint in October

Another Filipino will soon be proclaimed as saint after the Vatican set the canonization of Blessed Pedro Calungsod on October 21 this year.   Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, confirmed the canonization of Calungsod and six others on Saturday night (Manila time) after a Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican Information Service reported.   During the announcement, the Vatican official described Calungsod as a “Filipino lay catechist and martyr.”   Calungsod, a Cebuano missionary who was martyred in Guam in 1672, will be proclaimed as saint more than a decade after he was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2000.   Last October, the Filipino martyr passed the third and final stage towards sainthood after the Vatican verified a second miracle attributed to him—the healing of a businesswoman from the Visayas who fell into a coma in 2003.   Calungsod’s canonization will come 24 years after Vatican proclaimed Lorenzo Ruiz, a missionary martyred in Japan in 1637, as the first Filipino saint. Calungsod was killed at the age of 18 while doing his missionary work on April 2, 1627, a day before Palm Sunday that year. Born in Visayas in 1654, Calungsod accompanied Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores to Guam, then the Mariana Islands, and led a number of locals to convert to the Catholic faith. Calungsod and San Vitores, however, suffered persecution after a certain Chinese named Choco accused them of spreading poison through the baptism ritual. - Andreo C. Calonzo/KBK, GMA News