Pope Francis Recognizes Miracle Attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila’s Spiritual Daughter

St. John of the Cross wrote the opening commentary on his “Spiritual Canticle” at Sister Ana’s request and entrusted the document to her while he was imprisoned in Toledo.

Pope Francis advanced Ana’s cause for beatification on the feast of St. John of the Cross.

The pope also recognized a miracle attributed to a Mexican priest, Father Moisés Lira Serafín (1893-1950), whose intercession healed an unborn child of fetal hydrops in 2004, according to the Vatican.

Lira served as a priest amid the religious persecution during Mexico’s Cristero War. He expanded his clandestine apostolate in 1926 by forming groups of catechists to encourage young people in their faith. Lira went on to found the Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity of Mary Immaculate in 1934.

In Thursday’s decree, Pope Francis recognized the martyrdom of five priests and one seminarian.

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Father Luigi Carrara, Father Giovanni Didonè, and Father Vittorio Faccin were Xaverian missionary priests from Italy serving in the Democratic Republic of Congo who were martyred by anti-religious guerrillas in the Kwilu Rebellion in 1964. Father Albert Joubert, a local diocesan priest born to a French father and African mother, was killed along with them.

The pope also approved the martyrdom of Ján Havlík, a Slovak seminarian who was arrested and tortured by the communist government and sentenced to 10 years of forced labor in a uranium mine, where he carried out a clandestine apostolate among the prisoners until his health deteriorated due to the harsh working conditions leading to his death in 1965.

The martyrdom of Father Giuseppe Rossi, an Italian diocesan priest killed by Fascist soldiers on Feb. 26, 1945, was also recognized in the decree.

With the papal approval of their upcoming beatifications, Sister Anna of Jesus, Father Moisés Lira Serafín, Father Luigi Carrara, Father Giovanni Didonè, Father Vittorio Faccin, Father Albert Joubert, Father Giuseppe Rossi, and Ján Havlík are each one step away from being canonized as saints, which will require a miracle attributed to their intercession. 

Three 20th-century Catholics were also declared Venerable in the decree. Pope Francis recognized the heroic virtue of a father of five from Guatemala named Ernesto Guglielmo Cofiño Ubico (1899–1991) as well as Father Alberto Beretta (1916–2001), an Italian Capuchin priest and physician who served as a missionary in Brazil for 33 years, and Francesca Lancellotti (1917–2008), an Italian laywoman known for her spiritual gifts.