by Francis X. Rocca

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of 13 candidates, including the “father of Puerto Rican public education” and the Canadian founder of a religious order dedicated to helping unwed mothers.

During a meeting Dec. 9 with Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, the pope signed decrees recognizing that Rafael Cordero Molino and Mother Rosalie Cadron-Jette lived the Christian virtues in a heroic way and are venerable.

Cordero, who was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1790, and died there in 1868, founded and operated a free school for poor children of all races.

Mother Cadron-Jette, who was born in Lavaltrie, Quebec, in 1794, and died in Montreal in 1864, was a midwife who founded the Sisters of Misericorde.

The pope also recognized eight other people as venerable, including Sister Orsola Mezzini, an Italian who died in 1919 and served as the first superior general of the Sisters of the Little Mission for the Deaf; and Trappist Father Romano Bottegal, an Italian who died as a hermit in Lebanon in 1978.