In this Jubilee year, it is not only the adolescent Carlos Acutis or the young Piergiorgio Frassati who will be canonised in the coming weeks, or Floribert Bwana Chui Bin Kositi, who was beatified last June, but there are many young people who, in their youth, have strongly felt the fascination of Jesus and the Gospel.
Last January 25th in Madrid, the cause for beatification of Sister Giulia Clare Crockett, a missionary of Irish origin, who died in 2016, at the age of 33, during an earthquake in Ecuador, officially began. Sr. Clare belonged to the Congregation of the Servants of the Home of the Mother.
Born in 1982, at the age of 18, Clare abandoned a promising acting career to pursue a life in the religious order. A choice that later took her from Spain, where she had been educated, to Latin America, where she met her death.
The contagious smile that Clare shows in many of the photos portrays her sense of an interior joy that characterised the entire existence of the young nun. Perhaps also for this reason, as well as for the radical nature of her faith (her motto was “all or nothing”), devotion to Sister Clare Crockett quickly spread to various countries around the world.
In Italy, on the same day as Sister Crockett, the Archbishop of Taranto in southern Italy officially concluded the diocesan phase of the beatification process of the Servant of God, Pierangelo Capuzzimati, who died of leukaemia on April 30, 2008, at the age of 17. The disease, far from throwing him into despair, led him to intensify his spiritual life, dedicating his time to prayer, study and contemplation of the beauty of creation.
On March 15 of last year, the diocesan phase of the beatification process of Akash Bashir, a young Pakistani and a former Salesian student, who sacrificed his life to protect hundreds of faithful, also concluded. On March 15, 2015, a twenty-year-old Akash chose to prevent a suicide bomber from entering the church during Sunday Mass. The attacker blew himself up; both died, but the young man’s sacrifice prevented a massacre. If the Pope approves the decree regarding his martyrdom, Akash will be beatified without the need for a miracle, thus becoming the first blessed of Pakistan, one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.
Also in the spring of 2024, the Archbishop of Krakow announced the opening of the cause of beatification for Helena Kmieć: a young Polish missionary born in 1991 and killed in 2017, during a robbery attempt in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In 2012, Helena Kmieć joined the “Salvator” Missionary Volunteer Service of the Salvatorian religious congregation. On behalf of the Volunteer Service, she was sent twice on short missions, during which she conducted after-school activities for children in Salvatorian parishes, once in Galgahévíz, Hungary, and the second time in Timisoara, Romania.
In 2013, she participated in a three-month mission in Zambia, which left a deep mark on her heart. She was especially involved with street children; she cared for them and made her intelligence available, giving lessons in English and mathematics, but above all, she became an apostle for them, evangelising them first of all with her example of genuine and strong faith.
When she returned to Poland, she faced a difficult period due to a lung disease, which also required surgery, but she was not discouraged and continued to animate the Missionary Movement with her presence and her prayer. In 2014, having regained her strength, she went to replace a sick missionary in Timisoara in Romania.
In the meantime, after graduating, she began working as a hostess for the WizzAir company, and began planning to build a family together with her boyfriend, whom she wanted to marry soon.
However, she decided to leave again. On January 8, 2017, she began her missionary service with the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Virgin in Cochabamba, in central Bolivia. On the morning of January 24, the local child care centre was attacked by robbers. Helena was there with another volunteer, Anita. During the incident, the attacker stabbed Helena. Despite attempts to save her life, Helena died.
The death of Helena Agnieszka Kmieć resonated in Poland, and among the faithful, the opinion of the sanctity of her life devoted to God, to others and to the Church, emerged spontaneously.
If successful, the cause of beatification for Darwin Ramos, opened in 2019, will bring a Filipino street boy to the devotion of the Church. Unable to go to school because his family lived in poverty, Darwin collected garbage on the outskirts of Manila for years and, forced by his father, then began begging from passers-by.
Born in 1994, Darwin died in 2012, not yet eighteen, due to a form of myopathy. His encounter with Christ took place thanks to the foundation “A Bridge for Children”, started by a French missionary who takes care of street children. At 12, Darwin asked to be baptised; the following year, he received Confirmation and First Communion. Faith became his great strength to face the disease, which would lead to his death, at the end of a series of intense sufferings.
Meanwhile, a young Congolese layperson, Floribert Bwana Chui Bin Kositi was beatified on Sunday, 15 June 2025, in Rome, at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, during the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. Following the beatification Mass in Rome, a thanksgiving Mass will be held in Goma on Tuesday, 8 July, the anniversary of his martyrdom.
Floribert was a member of the Community of ‘Sant’Egidio’ in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2007, he graduated and found a job as the director of the customs office for the quality control of goods. An important position in a border town like Goma. His job was to check the quality of food products in transit at the border and certify their good condition. Floribert’s arrival marked a sudden change of direction for the office, because he, unlike his predecessors, refused to be bribed to pass loads of spoiled food.
During the month before his death, his technical service had drawn up a very detailed report on a large batch of spoiled rice, and this time too, he had received phone calls and pressure, even from public authorities, to turn a blind eye and take his bribe just as everyone had always done. But he remained adamant and had the entire batch (4 or 5 tons of rice) destroyed. On July 9, his lifeless body was found in a field. The autopsy revealed that he had been tortured and beaten before being killed.
Floribert Bwana Chui is the fourth Congolese blessed, following the beatification of Blessed Anuarite Nengapeta, Isidore Bakanja, and Father Albert Joubert, who was beatified along with three Xaverian missionaries on 18 August 2024 in Uvira, eastern DRC. (Philip Chiba)
