Pope Francis today declared ten people saints, including a Dutch priest, a Nazi fighter killed in the Dachau concentration camp, and a French hermit monk killed in Algeria.

The 85-year-old pope was brought to the altar in a wheelchair due to knee and leg pain. There were more than 50.000 people in St. Peter's Square, one of the largest rallies since the Kovid pandemic was lifted.

He read the names of the canonized persons, and after the proclamation of each one as a saint, the gathered chanted.

The Dutch priest Titus Brandsma was a member of the Carmelite clergy and director of the Catholic University of Nijmegen. He spoke out against Nazi ideology even before World War II and the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940.

Brandsma was arrested in 1942. He was first held in Dutch prisons and then taken to the infamous Dachau concentration camp, where he underwent biological experiments. He was eventually executed by lethal injection at the age of 61.

The second newly proclaimed saint was Charles de Foucault, a 19th-century French nobleman, soldier, explorer, and geographer who later converted and became a priest and lived as a hermit among the poor Berbers of North Africa. He was killed in Algeria in 1916.

The other eight were canonized by Devashayam Pillay, who was assassinated for converting to Christianity in 18th-century India, and César de Buss, a 16th-century French priest who founded a religious order.

Pope Francis also canonized two Italian priests, three Italian nuns and a French nun. They all lived between the 16th and 20th centuries.

"These saints have influenced the spiritual and social development of their peoples and of the whole human race, and in today's world, unfortunately, the distance is deepening and tensions and wars are becoming more frequent," Pope Francis said after the Mass.

He added that "world leaders must be the protagonists of peace, not war," alluding to the war in Ukraine.

Miracles are attributed to all the new saints.