The Vatican set the canonization of Calungsod, who was described as a "Filipino lay cathecist and martyr", and six others on Saturday night after a mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI.
Calungsod, a Cebuano missionary who was martyred in Guam in 1672, will be proclaimed as saint more than a decade after he was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2000.
Last October, the Filipino martyr passed the third and final stage towards sainthood after the Vatican verified a second miracle attributed to him - the healing of a businesswoman from the Visayas who fell into a coma in 2003.
Calungsod’s canonization will come 24 years after Vatican proclaimed Lorenzo Ruiz, a missionary martyred in Japan in 1637, as the first Filipino saint.
Calungsod was killed at the age of 18 while doing his missionary work on April 2, 1627, a day before Palm Sunday that year.
Born in Visayas in 1654, Calungsod accompanied Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores to Guam, then the Mariana Islands, and led a number of locals to convert to the Catholic faith.
Calungsod and San Vitores, however, suffered persecution after a certain Chinese named Choco accused them of spreading poison through the baptism ritual.
A biopic to be shot
The provincial governments of Cebu and Ilocos Norte will co-produce a movie about Pedro Calungsod.
The two provinces see this as a way of promoting Cebuanos and strengthening their sister-province relationship.
Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee Marcos, who is involved in film production, is an investor of a software development firm here in Cebu that’s into creative industry design and animation.
“Maraming magagaling na (There are many good) animators here in Cebu,” Marcos said, adding there is a need to publicize Calungsod’s story.
[Sources: GMA News, Sunstar]