Sr. Maria Anna Cope, a German-American immigrant, went to Molokai to help Fr. Damien with the lepers and died there.

Anna Schäffer was a German mystic and stigmatic who was confined to her bed after an accident yet still performed miracles while alive.

For Americans and Canadians, the most exciting is probably Kateri Tekakwitha, the “Lily of the Mohawks.” Converted by 17th-century French missionaries, she was shunned by her own people and left what is now New York state for a Catholic Mohawk village in Canada where she lived as a sort of lay nun. After her death, Kateri’s fame spread”€”thanks to her example, 50 years after her death a convent of sisters of noble Indian birth was opened in Mexico City. In the 20th century, Catholic Indians increasingly sought her patronage”€”though some of the AIM school of history tried to hijack her image in the same way they attempted to blacken Fr. Junipero Serra’s. Regardless, she has become a cornerstone of American Indian Catholicism”€”and strangely enough, patroness of Taiwanese aborigines.

All of these seven were missionaries”€”even bedridden St. Anna Schäffer, who had wanted to be a missionary sister before the accident that left her bedridden. As the Pope said in his sermon at the time, “these new saints, different in origin, language, nationality and social condition, are united among themselves and with the whole People of God in the mystery of salvation of Christ the Redeemer.” He also noted that the day happened to be “World Mission Sunday.” Many observers remarked that the rituals observed were partly a return to past tradition. The most obvious sign of this was Benedict’s wearing of the fanon, a papal vestment rarely seen since Vatican II.

While none of this is overtly political, the canonizations do have political overtones. Since the Council, the Church has appeared to be like an automobile company urging potential customers to take public transportation. It has been the age of Kennedy Catholicism, of dialogue rather than conversion, of decay rather than growth. But Benedict XVI has spearheaded an attempt to reverse all of this, which goes under the broad title of “the New Evangelization.” Under that banner, all sorts of efforts from trying to reconcile the SSPX to the first few fitful attempts to evangelize the Muslims have been mounted. Any success in these areas will certainly infuriate people”€”especially the powerful”€”in and outside the Church. But I suspect the seven saints would approve.