Pope Benedict XVI will declare four new saints during a canonisation ceremony in the Vatican on July 1, the Vatican press office announced on Friday.
The ceremony will be the second canonisation presided over by the German pontiff, who appears less inclined than his predecessor to declare large numbers of saints and blesseds.
John Paul declared more of both categories than all his predecessors from the previous four centuries put together. The new saints, two men and two women, will take Benedict's tally of canonisations to nine since his election in April 2005.
They are:
* Rafael Guizar Valencia, a Mexican bishop famed for his evangelising work during the religious persecution in his country at the start of the 20th century;
* Filippo Smaldone, a Neapolitan priest who founded an order of nuns, the Salesian Sisters of the Sacred Heart, to care for the deaf and poor;
* Rosa Venerini, a 17th-century Italian woman who devoted her life to training school teachers and founded a religious
congregation specialised in the same;
* Theodore Guerin, a French nun who founded a string of Catholic schools in 19th-century America.
