ROME — Pope Francis on Friday blasted the “radical individualism” that he said was infecting society today, as he greeted Argentine pilgrims who are in town for this weekend’s canonization of the first female saint from his home country.
Instead, Francis held up as a model the 18th century Argentine laywoman lovingly known as Mama Antula, who ministered to the poor and helped keep Jesuit spirituality alive in Argentina after the religious order, to which the pope belongs, was suppressed.
Francis will canonize Mama Antula, whose real name was María Antonia di San Giuseppe de Paz y Figueroa, in a ceremony Sunday that will also mark his first meeting with Argentina’s new libertarian president, Javier Milei.
Milei, who has spoken in favor of loosening labor laws and suggested people should be allowed to sell their own vital organs, was due to arrive Friday in Rome from Israel. On Monday, he is to meet formally with Francis and later Italy’s right-wing leader, Premier Giorgia Meloni.
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Speaking to pilgrims who traveled to Rome for the ceremony, Francis praised Mama Antula as an example of someone who was willing to risk it all for the sake of spreading the faith, especially to the poorest.
“Mama Antula’s charity, above all in the service to the neediest, is today very much in evidence in the midst of a society that runs the risk of forgetting that radical individualism is the most difficult virus to overcome,” he told them. “A virus that deceives. It makes us believe that it’s all about giving free rein to one’s ambitions.”
History of new saint
Mama Antula was born in 1730 to a wealthy family in Tucuman, Argentina, but left her privilege behind at age 15 to join a group of Jesuit-inspired women. After the Company of Jesus was suppressed in 1767 and its priests expelled from Spain’s colonies, Mama Antula kept the Jesuits’ Ignatian spiritual exercises alive by teaching them across Argentina, even at the risk of being imprisoned.
“This dimension of clandestinity cannot be forgotten. It is very important,” Francis said. “Another message that she gives us in today’s world is not to give up in the face of adversity, not to give up in our good intentions to bring the Gospel to all, despite the challenges that this may represent.”
While history’s first Jesuit and first Argentine pope clearly has a particular affinity for a Jesuit-inspired Argentine like Mama Antula, it’s not the first time he has given his countrymen a saint so close to his heart.
In 2016, Francis canonized Argentina’s first saint: José Gabriel del Rosario Brochero, a poncho-wearing, mate-sipping “gaucho priest” who ministered in the Argentine peripheries and was in many ways a 19th-century version of Francis himself.
An empty pitcher and shot sized cups sit on an altar during an ayahuasca ceremony hosted by Hummingbird Church in Hildale, Utah, on Friday, Oct. 14, 2022. Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew that contains an Amazon shrub with the active ingredient, DMT, and a vine containing monoamine oxidase inhibitors that prevents the drug from breaking down in the body causing visions lasting several hours. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
Participants lay face down on the grass during an integration circle at an ayahuasca retreat in Hildale, Utah, on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022. Following each of the three ayahuasca ceremonies, Hummingbird Church asks their participants to partake in integration, or a group reflection and discussion, to help interpret messages they received from the ayahuasca. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
The Rev. Siv Limstrand lights candles at the church’s cabin in Bolterdalen, Norway, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. The cabin is used for retreats and church groups. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
Svalbard Kirke member Lars-Olav Tunheim descends from Plataberget mountain during a hike in Longyearbyen, Norway, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023. As climate change impacts the Svalbard archipelago faster and deeper than the rest of the world, its pastor is helping the community of miners and environmentalists grapple with transformation in this unforgiving, awe-inspiring wilderness. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
Joshimath town is seen along side snow capped mountains, in India’s Himalayan mountain state of Uttarakhand, Jan. 21, 2023. For months, residents in Joshimath, a holy town burrowed high up in India’s Himalayan mountains, have seen their homes slowly sink. They pleaded for help, but it never arrived. In January however, their town made national headlines. Big, deep cracks had emerged in over 860 homes, making them unlivable. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Munni Devi, front, wipes her tears as she and Shanta Devi leave their house, in Joshimath, in India’s Himalayan mountain state of Uttarakhand, Jan. 19, 2023. Big, deep cracks had emerged in over 860 homes in Joshimath, where they snaked through floors, ceilings and walls, making them unlivable. Roads were split with crevices and multi-storied hotels slumped to one side. Authorities declared it a disaster zone and came in on bulldozers, razing down whole parts of a town that had become lopsided. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Loyola University basketball player, Tom Welch, shakes hands with Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the team’s official chaplain, before attending practice on Monday, Jan. 23, 2023, in Chicago. The beloved Catholic nun captured the world’s imagination and became something of a folk hero while supporting the Ramblers at the NCAA Final Four in 2018. At the age of 103, Sister Jean is using her platform to publish her first book, “Wake Up with Purpose: What I’ve Learned in My First Hundred Years.” In the memoir she tells her story and offers life lessons and spiritual guidance. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
Pope Francis, second from left, looks at traditional dancers performing at the Martyrs’ Stadium In Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023. Francis is in Congo and South Sudan for a six-day trip, hoping to bring comfort and encouragement to two countries that have been riven by poverty, conflicts and what he calls a “colonialist mentality” that has exploited Africa for centuries. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Morning service concludes in the annex of the Cathedral Notre Dame du Congo in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sunday Jan. 29, 2023. The cathedral is being prepared for Pope Francis’ visit to Congo and South Sudan for a six-day trip starting Jan, 31, hoping to bring comfort and encouragement to two countries that have been riven by poverty, conflicts and what he calls a “colonialist mentality” that has exploited Africa for centuries. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
Navy Chaplain Lt. Cmdr. Ben Garrett counsels a sailor in his quarters on the USS Bataan on Monday, March 20, 2023 at Norfolk Naval Station in Norfolk, Va. One of the chaplains’ roles aboard the ship is help sailors deal with stress Navy life brings. (AP Photo/John C. Clark)
A shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau is scanned at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10, 2023. Most of the victims were Jews killed in dictator Adolf Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe. (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)
A sandstorm rolls into Dimona, Israel, as the Hebrew Israelite community marks New World Passover, an annual celebration of their 1967 exodus from the United States, Thursday, June 1, 2023. Now, dozens of their members are facing the threat of deportation. The community do not consider themselves Jewish, but they claim an ancestral connection to the Holy Land. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Firewalkers dance across a bed of burning coals in a ritual in honor of St. Constantine in the village of Lagkadas, Greece on Monday, May 22, 2023. Firewalking is the most spectacular and public of these annual rituals that also include dancing with icons, prayer, and shared meals by associations of devotees of the Christian Orthodox saint called “anastenaria” that have held similar celebrations for centuries. (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell’Orto)
A worker asks to a tour guide person to stop taking photos to tourists due to the start of the praying time at Byzantine-era Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, Wednesday, June 28, 2023. With tourism reaching or surpassing pre-pandemic levels across Southern Europe this summer, iconic sacred sites struggle to find ways to accommodate both the faithful who come to pray and millions of increasingly secular visitors attracted by art and architecture. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Worshippers attend a Mass in the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, Spain, Sunday, July 9, 2023. With tourism reaching or surpassing pre-pandemic levels across Southern Europe this summer, iconic sacred sites struggle to find ways to accommodate both the faithful who come to pray and millions of increasingly secular visitors attracted by art and architecture. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami stands at the base of a Rudraksha tree, which produces a bright blue fruit at the Kauai Hindu Monastery on July 10, 2023, in Kapaa, Hawaii. The monks who reside at the temple monastery practice Shaivism, one of the major Hindu traditions, which worships Shiva as the supreme being. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami climbs the rocks along the Wailua river, which is sacred to many Native Hawaiians, at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery on July 13, 2023, in Kapaa, Hawaii. The monastery was founded by guru Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami in 1970. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
The memorial of the Rev. Maxim Andre of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, on the peninsula of Kalaupapa, Hawaii, on Tuesday, July 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
A Star of David hands from a fence outside the dormant landmark Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood on Thursday, July 13, 2023, the day a federal jury announced they had found Robert Bowers, who in 2018 killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue, eligible for the death penalty. The next stage of the trial with present further evidence and testimony on whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison. It stands as the deadliest attack on Jewish people in U.S. history. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar/File)
Members of the Hebrew Israelite community rally outside of the District Court in Beersheba, Israel, ahead of a hearing on the deportation orders for dozens from their community, Wednesday, July 19, 2023. Over the decades, the community has made inroads into Israeli society, and most of them have citizenship or residency rights. But 130 members remain undocumented, and Israeli authorities have ordered them to leave. The orders have left dozens of people, some of whom have lived most of their lives in Israel, in an uncertain legal limbo.(AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
A girl watches the sunset over the scenic Kadisha Valley, a holy landmark for Lebanon’s Maronite Christians, in the northeast mountain town of Bcharre, Lebanon, Friday, July 21, 2023. For Lebanon’s Christians, the cedars are sacred, these tough evergreen trees that survive the mountain’s harsh snowy winters. They point out with pride that Lebanon’s cedars are mentioned 103 times in the Bible. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Lebanese Maronite Christian Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, second left, leads the sermon to commemorate the Feast of the Transfiguration in the Cedars of God forest, in the northeast mountain town of Bcharre, Lebanon, Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023. For Lebanon’s Christians, the cedars are sacred, these tough evergreen trees that survive the mountain’s harsh snowy winters. They point out with pride that Lebanon’s cedars are mentioned 103 times in the Bible. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Maya Johnson, 7, of New York, is playfully swung into the lake by her friends during Camp Be’chol Lashon, a sleepaway camp for Jewish children of color, Friday, July 28, 2023, in Petaluma, Calif., at Walker Creek Ranch. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Dean Wiberg, right, volunteers at the evangelical Crossroads Chapel tent, which distributes thousands of free Bibles during the Minnesota State Fair in Falcon Heights, Minn., on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. For many faith communities, the fair has long been an opportunity to reach a diverse crowd that can top two million. (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell’Orto)
A horse rider holds a Mongolian flag during a traditional performance at a cultural event organized for the media and entourage following Pope Francis’ visit to Mongolia, at the Mongolia Cultural Park, some 40 kilometers out of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pairs of oxen pull a boat-shaped float with an iconic century-old sacred image of Virgin Mary breastfeeding infant Jesus standing on the bow, during the Our Lady of Remedies procession in the small town of Lamego, in the Douro River Valley, Portugal, Friday, Sept. 8, 2023. One of Portugal’s largest and oldest religious festivals, the two-week celebrations that culminate with the procession, draw thousands. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)
2023 in religion: Images capture global expressions of faith, spiritualism
In the searing heat of Mecca, throngs of Muslims from around the world converged for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
In the round-the-clock darkness of the polar night, a Lutheran pastor in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard persevered in her ministry to one of the world’s most remote towns.
Associated Press photographers were on the scene — there and in scores of other locales ranging from the flood-stricken mountains of northern India to the sacred volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Their mission: Finding myriad ways to convey how faith and spiritualism, in their many forms, manifested themselves around the world in 2023.
An empty pitcher and shot sized cups sit on an altar during an ayahuasca ceremony hosted by Hummingbird Church in Hildale, Utah, on Friday, Oct. 14, 2022. Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew that contains an Amazon shrub with the active ingredient, DMT, and a vine containing monoamine oxidase inhibitors that prevents the drug from breaking down in the body causing visions lasting several hours. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
Participants lay face down on the grass during an integration circle at an ayahuasca retreat in Hildale, Utah, on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022. Following each of the three ayahuasca ceremonies, Hummingbird Church asks their participants to partake in integration, or a group reflection and discussion, to help interpret messages they received from the ayahuasca. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
The Rev. Siv Limstrand lights candles at the church’s cabin in Bolterdalen, Norway, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. The cabin is used for retreats and church groups. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
Svalbard Kirke member Lars-Olav Tunheim descends from Plataberget mountain during a hike in Longyearbyen, Norway, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023. As climate change impacts the Svalbard archipelago faster and deeper than the rest of the world, its pastor is helping the community of miners and environmentalists grapple with transformation in this unforgiving, awe-inspiring wilderness. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
Joshimath town is seen along side snow capped mountains, in India’s Himalayan mountain state of Uttarakhand, Jan. 21, 2023. For months, residents in Joshimath, a holy town burrowed high up in India’s Himalayan mountains, have seen their homes slowly sink. They pleaded for help, but it never arrived. In January however, their town made national headlines. Big, deep cracks had emerged in over 860 homes, making them unlivable. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Munni Devi, front, wipes her tears as she and Shanta Devi leave their house, in Joshimath, in India’s Himalayan mountain state of Uttarakhand, Jan. 19, 2023. Big, deep cracks had emerged in over 860 homes in Joshimath, where they snaked through floors, ceilings and walls, making them unlivable. Roads were split with crevices and multi-storied hotels slumped to one side. Authorities declared it a disaster zone and came in on bulldozers, razing down whole parts of a town that had become lopsided. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Loyola University basketball player, Tom Welch, shakes hands with Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the team’s official chaplain, before attending practice on Monday, Jan. 23, 2023, in Chicago. The beloved Catholic nun captured the world’s imagination and became something of a folk hero while supporting the Ramblers at the NCAA Final Four in 2018. At the age of 103, Sister Jean is using her platform to publish her first book, “Wake Up with Purpose: What I’ve Learned in My First Hundred Years.” In the memoir she tells her story and offers life lessons and spiritual guidance. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
Pope Francis, second from left, looks at traditional dancers performing at the Martyrs’ Stadium In Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023. Francis is in Congo and South Sudan for a six-day trip, hoping to bring comfort and encouragement to two countries that have been riven by poverty, conflicts and what he calls a “colonialist mentality” that has exploited Africa for centuries. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Morning service concludes in the annex of the Cathedral Notre Dame du Congo in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sunday Jan. 29, 2023. The cathedral is being prepared for Pope Francis’ visit to Congo and South Sudan for a six-day trip starting Jan, 31, hoping to bring comfort and encouragement to two countries that have been riven by poverty, conflicts and what he calls a “colonialist mentality” that has exploited Africa for centuries. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
Navy Chaplain Lt. Cmdr. Ben Garrett counsels a sailor in his quarters on the USS Bataan on Monday, March 20, 2023 at Norfolk Naval Station in Norfolk, Va. One of the chaplains’ roles aboard the ship is help sailors deal with stress Navy life brings. (AP Photo/John C. Clark)
A shoe that belonged to a child victim of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau is scanned at the conservation laboratory on the grounds of the camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Wednesday, May 10, 2023. Most of the victims were Jews killed in dictator Adolf Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe. (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)
A sandstorm rolls into Dimona, Israel, as the Hebrew Israelite community marks New World Passover, an annual celebration of their 1967 exodus from the United States, Thursday, June 1, 2023. Now, dozens of their members are facing the threat of deportation. The community do not consider themselves Jewish, but they claim an ancestral connection to the Holy Land. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Firewalkers dance across a bed of burning coals in a ritual in honor of St. Constantine in the village of Lagkadas, Greece on Monday, May 22, 2023. Firewalking is the most spectacular and public of these annual rituals that also include dancing with icons, prayer, and shared meals by associations of devotees of the Christian Orthodox saint called “anastenaria” that have held similar celebrations for centuries. (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell’Orto)
A worker asks to a tour guide person to stop taking photos to tourists due to the start of the praying time at Byzantine-era Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, Wednesday, June 28, 2023. With tourism reaching or surpassing pre-pandemic levels across Southern Europe this summer, iconic sacred sites struggle to find ways to accommodate both the faithful who come to pray and millions of increasingly secular visitors attracted by art and architecture. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Worshippers attend a Mass in the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, Spain, Sunday, July 9, 2023. With tourism reaching or surpassing pre-pandemic levels across Southern Europe this summer, iconic sacred sites struggle to find ways to accommodate both the faithful who come to pray and millions of increasingly secular visitors attracted by art and architecture. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami stands at the base of a Rudraksha tree, which produces a bright blue fruit at the Kauai Hindu Monastery on July 10, 2023, in Kapaa, Hawaii. The monks who reside at the temple monastery practice Shaivism, one of the major Hindu traditions, which worships Shiva as the supreme being. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami climbs the rocks along the Wailua river, which is sacred to many Native Hawaiians, at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery on July 13, 2023, in Kapaa, Hawaii. The monastery was founded by guru Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami in 1970. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
The memorial of the Rev. Maxim Andre of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, on the peninsula of Kalaupapa, Hawaii, on Tuesday, July 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
A Star of David hands from a fence outside the dormant landmark Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood on Thursday, July 13, 2023, the day a federal jury announced they had found Robert Bowers, who in 2018 killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue, eligible for the death penalty. The next stage of the trial with present further evidence and testimony on whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison. It stands as the deadliest attack on Jewish people in U.S. history. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar/File)
Members of the Hebrew Israelite community rally outside of the District Court in Beersheba, Israel, ahead of a hearing on the deportation orders for dozens from their community, Wednesday, July 19, 2023. Over the decades, the community has made inroads into Israeli society, and most of them have citizenship or residency rights. But 130 members remain undocumented, and Israeli authorities have ordered them to leave. The orders have left dozens of people, some of whom have lived most of their lives in Israel, in an uncertain legal limbo.(AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
A girl watches the sunset over the scenic Kadisha Valley, a holy landmark for Lebanon’s Maronite Christians, in the northeast mountain town of Bcharre, Lebanon, Friday, July 21, 2023. For Lebanon’s Christians, the cedars are sacred, these tough evergreen trees that survive the mountain’s harsh snowy winters. They point out with pride that Lebanon’s cedars are mentioned 103 times in the Bible. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Lebanese Maronite Christian Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, second left, leads the sermon to commemorate the Feast of the Transfiguration in the Cedars of God forest, in the northeast mountain town of Bcharre, Lebanon, Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023. For Lebanon’s Christians, the cedars are sacred, these tough evergreen trees that survive the mountain’s harsh snowy winters. They point out with pride that Lebanon’s cedars are mentioned 103 times in the Bible. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Maya Johnson, 7, of New York, is playfully swung into the lake by her friends during Camp Be’chol Lashon, a sleepaway camp for Jewish children of color, Friday, July 28, 2023, in Petaluma, Calif., at Walker Creek Ranch. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Dean Wiberg, right, volunteers at the evangelical Crossroads Chapel tent, which distributes thousands of free Bibles during the Minnesota State Fair in Falcon Heights, Minn., on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. For many faith communities, the fair has long been an opportunity to reach a diverse crowd that can top two million. (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell’Orto)
A horse rider holds a Mongolian flag during a traditional performance at a cultural event organized for the media and entourage following Pope Francis’ visit to Mongolia, at the Mongolia Cultural Park, some 40 kilometers out of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pairs of oxen pull a boat-shaped float with an iconic century-old sacred image of Virgin Mary breastfeeding infant Jesus standing on the bow, during the Our Lady of Remedies procession in the small town of Lamego, in the Douro River Valley, Portugal, Friday, Sept. 8, 2023. One of Portugal’s largest and oldest religious festivals, the two-week celebrations that culminate with the procession, draw thousands. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)