Pope Leo recognises heroic virtues of six new Venerables

Six Servants of God have been declared Venerable following Pope Leo XIV’s recognition of their heroic virtues.

During an audience on Saturday, 24 October, with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the Pope authorised the Dicastery to promulgate the corresponding decrees.

The six are Friedrich Kaiser Depel, the first Territorial Prelate of Caravelí in Peru and founder of the Missionary Sisters of Jesus, Word and Victim; Oreste Marengo, a Salesian bishop who served in India; Margarita Bavosi, known as “Luminosa”, a consecrated laywoman of the Focolare Movement; Domenico Pogliani, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milan; Alessandro Vitetti, a priest of the Diocese of Rossano-Cariati; and Daniele of San Giovanni Rotondo, a Capuchin friar and spiritual son of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina.

Friedrich Kaiser Depel was born on 24 May 1903 in Dülmen, Germany, and grew up in a deeply Catholic family. According to the biography published by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, he entered the seminary of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) in 1919 and made his perpetual profession in 1930.

He was ordained a priest on 10 August 1932. In April 1939, he was sent to Peru, where his congregation had established a new mission. He served as spiritual director and teacher at the seminary in Huánuco, before becoming rector and parish priest of the chapel attached to the missionary community.

Much of his ministry was spent in Lima. In 1957, he was appointed provincial administrator of the MSC and, on 21 November that year, Pope Pius XII named him the first Prelate of Caravelí.

After an earthquake struck the region in 1960, he worked to provide water supplies for local communities and rebuild the cathedral. The following year, he founded the Pious Union of the Missionary Sisters of Jesus, Word and Victim (MJVV). Made up of young local women, the community sought to address the shortage of priests and bring the faith to communities in the Andes.

He attended all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council, between 1962 and 1965, and was ordained a bishop on 7 December 1963.

Ill health led him to resign as Prelate on 25 May 1971. He then devoted himself to the theological and spiritual formation of the sisters, whose community Saint John Paul II recognised as a congregation of pontifical right on 14 September 1982.

Bishop Kaiser Depel died in Lima on 26 September 1993 and was buried in the sisters’ chapel in Caravelí. His steadfast faith and commitment to making Sacred Scripture more widely known earned him recognition as a pioneer of the biblical apostolate in Peru.