As the President awards a medal of distinction recognizing those who have have made extraordinary contributions in the service of the country, the Pope, as the head of the Catholic Church, recognizes those who have made extraordinary contributions in service of the Catholic faith. The Vatican has strict criteria for sainthood: in addition to overall historical significance, the saints have to have performed miracles or martyred themselves. An extensive process selects only a handful of candidates for sainthood, the highest honor.

On this day, October 11, in 2009, in front of 10,000 faithful inside St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome (and another 40,000 on the square outside of it) Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints.

Among them was a 19th-century French nun, Jeanne Jugan, who helped the elderly; a Polish bishop, Zygmunt Szcezesny Felinski, who defended Catholicism against the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, and Belgian priest, Jozef De Veuster, whose work with lepers in Hawaii was compared to work on AIDS sufferers of today. One Hawaiian woman suffering from cancer said she recovered after praying to Veuster, which the Church deemed a miracle.