Pope Francis has established a new path to canonize those who are not martyrs, but have sacrificed their lives for others in a heroic way.
Such examples would be the case of the religious sisters who died of Ebola in Africa while helping the sick, or the young Spaniard who was murdered on June 3 while trying to defend a victim of the London attacks.
Another example could also be the case of the Italian woman Chiara Corbella. She died at the age of 28, after refusing chemotherapy during her pregnancy, because there was a high probability that her unborn son would die. Franciscan Mychal Judge died in the September 11 attacks while he was spiritually helping a wounded person in one of the Twin Towers.
The objective of these new regulations is to include those who died heroically, but cannot be defined as martyrs because they were murdered for non-religious reasons. For example, Monsignor í?scar Romero or Maximilian Kolbe.
