Church bells pealed across the Catholic Philippines on Sunday as millions attended special masses to celebrate the naming of the country’s second saint, a young missionary killed over 340 years ago.

President Benigno Aquino 3rd declared Sunday a “national day of celebration” in Asia’s bastion of Catholicism.

In Manila, people from all walks of life congregated at the Sto. Niño de Tondo parish to watch the ceremonies naming Pedro Calungsod as one of seven new saints in the Catholic faith.

“The canonization of Saint Pedro Calungsod is a major and historic event for the Catholic Church and our predominantly Catholic nation,” Vice President Jejomar Binay said in a statement from Rome. “The event fills us with pride as Catholics, yet it calls on us to exercise humility and reflect on the supreme sacrifice made by Saint Calungsod in defense of his faith.”

Thousands from all walks of life holding small replicas of Calungsod, many of them teary-eyed, trooped to at least three different venues in Manila where the government had set up giant screens on which to show the solemn proceedings in Rome.

As Pope Benedict XVI read the names of the seven new saints, church bells across the Philippine rang out for a few minutes to welcome Calungsod’s sainthood.

“I am filled with joy. We now have two saints to intercede for our many problems,” said Nanang Linda Petra, a 54-year-old mother of 12, who took a day off from her work as a laundry woman to watch the ceremonies.

Leony Mercado, a 65-year-old retired engineer and a grandmother of five, openly wept as Calungsod’s name was called out.

“These are tears of joy. I cannot help but be overwhelmed,” she said, adding that when one of her children died due to an aneurysm in January, prayers to Calungsod helped to ease her suffering.

“I have asked Saint Pedro Calungsod to help bring her to heaven,” she said, while clutching a small banner with a likeness of the saint.

Devotees also flocked to a small farming town that claims Calungsod as its own, while saint souvenirs have become popular items across the nation of nearly 100 million people.

“There is something about him that touches the heart of the Filipino Catholics,” Father Francis Lucas, a media officer with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, told Agence France-Presse.

Calungsod is only the second Filipino to become a saint, after Lorenzo Ruiz, a missionary who was killed in Japan in 1637 and canonized in 1987.

Calungsod is the new patron saint for the youth, in recognition of his age—believed to be just 17—when he was killed in Guam in 1672 while attempting to convert natives.

He qualified for sainthood last year after the Vatican officially recognized a 2003 “miracle” in which a 49-year-old Filipino woman declared dead from a heart attack was revived after a doctor prayed to Calungsod for help.

In 2011, the Vatican said the incident could not be explained scientifically, and Pope Benedict subsequently acknowledged the incident as a miracle by Calungsod.

“It is a good recognition from the Catholic Church to have our second Filipino saint. It will show maturity and is a challenge to the Filipino faith,” bishop Antonieto Cabahug of Surigao City, who witnessed the canonization rites at the Vatican, said.

Hundreds of Filipinos attended the Vatican rites, many of them from the Visayas.

Among them were Cebuano sisters Merla and Marylene Pardenilla, who said that they wanted to see the canonization of the first Visayan saint.

“It is an honor to have our second Filipino saint. San Pedro Calungsod is a Cebuano like us so it is our pride. His footsteps must be followed by Flipinos, especially our government leaders, in order for the Philippines to move forward,” the Perdenilla sisters said.

Other saints
Pope Benedict XVI delivered a homily praising all seven new saints, saying that they “lived their lives in total consecration to God and in generous service to their brothers.”

Thousands of people, including American Indians, gathered on the square outside St. Peter’s Basilica, which was decked with portraits of those being canonized.

The other new saints include Kateri Tekakwitha, informally known as “Lily of the Mohawks” who has been a symbol of hope for American Indians for centuries, a French missionary to Madagascar, a German migrant to the United States who took care of lepers and a Spanish nun who campaigned for women’s rights.

Tekakwitha, who was born in 1656 to an Algonquin mother and a Mohawk father, was converted by Jesuit missionaries as a child. After surviving smallpox and being orphaned, she earned a following for her deep spiritualism before dying at just 24.

Another well-known figure from North America who was canonized is German-born Franciscan nun Maria Anna Cope who was born in 1838 and became known as the “Mother Marianne of Molokai” because she looked after lepers on the island of Molokai in the Hawaii archipelago.

A French Jesuit, Jacques Berthieu, who was executed in 1896 in Madagascar by rebels from the Menalamba movement, was also canonized.

The missionary refused to renounce his faith and is being considered the first saint of Madagascar, where he lived for 21 years.

A German lay woman, Maria Schaeffer, who was from the pope’s German home state of Bavaria, was also rewarded.

Schaeffer, who died in 1925, was badly burnt after falling into boiling water and spent the rest of her life bedridden.

She is credited with spreading the word of God in local villages.

An Italian priest, Giovanni Battista Piamarta, who in the late 19th century devoted his life to helping young people during the industrial revolution and founded a religious congregation, was also canonized.

The seventh new saint, Spanish nun Maria del Carmen, also founded a congregation and worked to better the lot of poor women in the 19th century, defending their social rights and helping their children’s education.

Catholic saints have to have two miracles to their names, which have to be certified by the Vatican in a years-long procedure.

WITH A REPORT FROM JOMAR CANLAS