Even in the midst of suffering and death, Christians can become witnesses of the Resurrection and the power of God’s compassion, Pope Francis said as he proclaimed two new saints on Sunday. In the Gospel reading, Jesus’s raising of a young widow’s child was not a magical performance but a reminder that he takes death upon himself to restore the suffering to new life, the Pope said. “Jesus is no wizard! He is God’s tenderness incarnate; the Father’s immense compassion is at work in Jesus.” At the start of the Mass in St Peter’s Square, Pope Francis canonised St Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad of Sweden, who re-founded the Bridgettine Sisters in the early 1900s and who helped hide Jews in her Rome convent during the Second World War; and St Stanislaus Papczynski of Poland, founder of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception. Banners bearing their images hung from the façade of St Peter’s Basilica as 40,000 people joined members of the two saints’ religious orders for the Mass. Born in Sweden in 1870 and baptised into the Lutheran Church, St Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad emigrated to the United States in 1886 to earn money for her family back home. After working as a nurse, she became a Catholic in 1902. Moving to Rome, she dedicated her life and her religious order to prayer and work for Christian unity. St John Paul II beatified her in Rome in 2000. In the 17th century, St Stainslaus Papczynski founded the first Polish religious order of men at a time of endless war, famine and disease, when many Poles, especially soldiers, did not prepare themselves for death. The order promoted social justice and prayers for the dying.