VATICAN CITY - Pope Leo XIV on Sunday created seven new saints -- among them a onetime Satanic priest who rediscovered his Christian faith.
Bells rang out over St Peter's Square for the ceremony, which saw him canonise that ex-occultist priest, Bartolo Longo, alongside a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea, an archbishop killed in the Armenian genocide, a Venezuelan "doctor of the poor" and three nuns who dedicated their lives to the poor and sick.
The former Satanic priest Longo, an Italian lawyer born in 1841 and who died in 1926, rejoined Catholicism and went on to found the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii.
"Today we have before us seven witnesses, the new Saints, who, with God's grace, kept the lamp of faith burning," Leo told an audience the Vatican estimated at some 70,000 people.
"May their intercession assist us in our trials and their example inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness," he said during his homily.
Huge portraits of the seven were unfurled from windows over the square as Leo, the first US pope, emerged from St Peter's Basilica dressed in a ceremonial white cassock with a mitre on his head, preceded by white-clad bishops and cardinals.
In his homily, Leo described the new saints as either "martyrs for their faith", "evangelisers and missionaries", "charismatic founders" of congregations or "benefactors of humanity".
The rite of canonisation was the second for the former Robert Prevost since he was made leader of the Catholic Church on May 8.
Last month, he proclaimed as saints Italians Carlo Acutis -- a teenager dubbed "God's Influencer" who spread the faith online before his death at age 15 in 2006 -- and Pier Giorgio Frassati, considered a model of charity who died in 1925, aged 24.
Canonisation is the final step towards sainthood in the Catholic Church, following beatification.
Three conditions are required -- most crucially that the individual has performed at least two miracles. He or she must be deceased for at least five years and have led an exemplary Christian life.