News Digest

Huge crowd gathers to see Pope Francis give Sri Lanka first saint, call for unity

Hundreds of thousands of people packed a Colombo oceanfront on Wednesday to see Pope Francis give Sri Lanka its first saint, a climax to a 300-year campaign to recognize the holiness of Indian-born missionary Joseph Vaz. The pope, who on Tuesday was tired after starting his trip under a blazing sun, looked rested as he was driven through the hushed crowd in an open vehicle to start the open-air Mass by the sparkling sea. The canonization is an example of Francis’s no-nonsense approach to creating saints to meet the demands of the flock for new holy figures.

My son can’t understand what’s going on, but I will take photographs and show him when he grows up how he attended this Holy Mass. It will be memorable for him, because the next pope may come to Sri Lanka, may be after 20 years.

Pradeep Niroshan, a 31-year-old insurance agent, who carried his 2-year-old son to the service

The pope, who feels churches need more models of sanctity, bent Church rules and dispensed with a regulation that normally requires a second miracle to be attributed to a candidate for sainthood. Vaz was beatified by Pope John Paul during a visit to Sri Lanka 20 years ago. On Monday, Francis called on Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka to uncover the truth about its long civil war between mainly Hindu Tamils and the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese and bring religious communities closer together. Catholics make up slightly more than 6 per cent of Sri Lanka’s population of 21 million, according to the government. They are by far the largest Christian denomination in the country. Other Christians make up just 1.3 per cent of the population, which is mostly Buddhist.