Floribert Bwuana Chui and other saints: love with Christ's charity is the vocation of every baptised person

On 15 June, the solemn beatification of the young Floribert Bwuana Chui, a Congolese from Goma, took place. He was killed in 2007 after resisting pressure to allow shipments of rotten rice to cross the border, which he had ordered to be destroyed in his capacity as Commissioner for Damages at the Office Congolais de Contrôle (OCC) (customs office). In doing so, he saved the lives and health of many people. 

In revenge, he was kidnapped by unknown persons on 7 July 2007 and his body, tortured and beaten, was found two days later.

Floribert, a man of peace and charity

The official biography describes him as a young man from a Catholic family, who grew up in the parish and was very active as an altar boy. An excellent law student, he had to move to Kinshasa to start his career, but he always remained very attached to his hometown, Goma, and above all to its people. In his greeting to pilgrims who had come to Rome for the beatification ceremony on 15 June, Pope Leo XIV said: "He lived the spirituality of the Sant’Egidio Community, which Pope Francis summarized in three words beginning with the letter “P”: prayer, the poor, and peace. The poor were decisive in his life. Blessed Floribert lived a family life committed to street children, driven to Goma by war, despised and orphaned. He loved them with Christ’s charity: he was interested in them and concerned with their human and Christian formation. A friend recalls: 'He was convinced that we were born to do great things, to make a mark on history, to transform reality'."

The precious value of the witness of lay people and young people

In a region as suffering as Kivu, torn apart by violence, Floribert carried on his battle for peace with meekness, serving the poor, practising friendship and encounter in a torn society.

The Holy Father also said of him: "This African martyr, in a continent rich in young people, shows how they can be a leaven for 'disarmed and disarming' peace. This Congolese layperson sheds light on the precious value of the witness of the laity and the young. May then, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary and Blessed Floribert, the longed-for peace in Kivu, Congo and all of Africa soon be reached!".

Canonisations and decrees of venerability: holiness is the vocation of all the baptised

June was a month rich in news regarding the holiness of all the baptised. During the Ordinary Public Consistory on 13 June, the Pope set the date on which the two young blessed, Carlo Acutis and Piergiorgio Frassati, will be raised to the honours of the altar. Their canonisation during the Jubilee Year had been announced by Pope Francis last November, and that of Acutis – scheduled for 27 April – had been suspended due to the death of the Pope, and will now both take place on Sunday 7 September.

Also to be enrolled in the Register of Saints, on Sunday 19 October 2025, are the Blessed Peter To Rot, catechist and first Papuan blessed; José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, a doctor; and Bartolo Longo, a lawyer.

Pope Leo XIV, in an audience granted to the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on 20 June, also decreed the venerability of two more lay people: João Luiz Pozzobon, a Brazilian permanent deacon, married and father, who in 1950 started the Schoenstatt Pilgrim Mother Campaign, a missionary and evangelising initiative to bring the image of Our Lady into homes, prisons, hospitals and schools; and Anna Fulgida Bartolacelli, of the Association of the Silent Workers of the Cross, who, afflicted by a serious illness that forced her to live in a wheelchair, was a soul of profound interior life that she nourished with Holy Mass, Eucharistic adoration, frequent confession, personal prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours and the Rosary.