Five Saints in One Act

Five banners waved in the procession that streamed across St. Peter's Square in Rome; in the giant frame that hung from the balcony of the basilica were pictures of three men, a woman and a boy. In a single ceremony last week, Pope Pius XII gave the Roman Catholic Church five new saints:

PIERRE Louis MARIE CHANEL (1803-41), a French missionary who was sent to the South Sea island of Futuna in the Tonga archipelago, where he was axed to death after three years, at the age of 38. Though he had achieved no marked success in converting the natives, the entire island, moved by his martyrdom, became Roman Catholic within three years of his death.

GASPARE DEL BUFALO (1786-1837) was exiled from his native Rome, shortly after he became a priest, by Napoleon's occupation. To care for the Romans, who had been left almost without a clergy during the occupation years, Father del Bufalo founded the Society of the Precious Blood, an order which has been notably successful in the U.S.

GIUSEPPE MARIA PIGNATELLI (1737-1811) was born a Spanish nobleman and became a Jesuit over family opposition. At the time the Jesuits were being suppressed in nearly every country; as Provincial in Italy he did much to restore the order's power and prestige.

DOMENICO SAVIO (1842-57) told his pastor, at the age of five, that he was big enough to serve Mass. When he was twelve, the frail Italian schoolboy became one of the first pupils of St. John Bosco, founder of the Salesian Soiety and educational pioneer. Domenico died three years later, after "living a full life in 15 years."

MARIA CROCIFISSA DI ROSA (1813-55) left convent school at 17 to take over her wealthy father's silk factory at Brescia, Italy, where she saw to the spiritual and material welfare of the workers. In the cholera epidemic of 1836 she nursed the sick, which led to her foundation of the Servants of Charity in 1839.

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