Pope Francis greets the faithful along Via della Conciliazione at the end of the canonisation mass.
Pope Francis has given the Catholic church new saints, including hundreds of 15th-century martyrs who were beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam, as he led his first canonisation ceremony before tens of thousands of people in St Peter’s Square.
The Martyrs of Otranto are 813 Italians who were slain in the southern Italian city in 1480 for defying demands made by Turkish invaders that they renounce Christianity.
The Pope gave Colombia its first saint: a nun, Laura of St Catherine of Siena Montoya y Upegui, who journeyed with other women by horseback in 1914 into the forests to be a teacher and spiritual guide.
The first pontiff from South America also canonised another Latin American woman. Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala, a Mexican who dedicated herself to nursing the sick, helped Catholics avoid persecution during a government crackdown of the faith in the 1920s.
