• A saint-making record is also a diplomatic headache for Pope Francis

    Franco Origlia / Getty Images Contributor

    Pope Francis waves to the crowd as he leaves at the end of the Holy Mass and Canonization Ceremony at St. Peter's Square. Sunday.

    Editor's note: This story includes a correction.

    By Claudio Lavanga, Correspondent, NBC News

    ROME -- Pope Francis canonized more than 800 Catholics in Saint Peter’s Square Sunday – the largest number to be elevated to sainthood at once in the history of the Catholic Church.

    The choice of some of the new saints was also striking, touching on the already-fragile relationship between Christianity and Islam.

    The new saints included hundreds of laymen from the southern Italian port town of Otranto who were slain in the 15th century by the invading Ottoman Turkish army after they refused to convert to Islam.

    In 1480, after conquering Constantinople – modern day Istanbul - the Ottoman Sultan Mohammed II planned to invade Rome, and Otranto became his army’s port of entrance into Italy.

    The local population fought back in a week-long siege, putting up a brave but hopeless resistance. When Ottoman soldiers finally overrun the town, they were ordered to kill every man over the age of 15 who refused to convert to Islam.

    More than 800 resisted, locking themselves up into the town’s Cathedral. Their ringleader, local shoemaker Antonio Primaldo, was first to be beheaded. According  to local legend, his headless body remained standing until the last of his fellow townspeople was killed.

    Since then, Primaldo and his townsfolk, who chose to die rather than betray their Catholic faith, have been hailed as martyrs. Their bones and skulls – proudly on display behind glass walls in the Cathedral of Otranto – are well-known Catholic relics and a popular pilgrimage destination.

    But the choice to highlight their sacrifice may put a strain on the already fragile relationship between the Catholic Church and Islam.

    Ever since his election, Pope Francis has called for greater dialogue between Christianity and other religions, in particular Islam. And so far, he has acted on that promise. He washed the feet of a young Muslim woman jailed in a juvenile prison on Holy Thursday, and reached out to the many “Muslim brothers and sisters” during his first Good Friday procession.

    So why risk creating yet another inter-faith row with a celebration which some in the Muslim world may be seen as a provocation?

    The answer is that it wasn’t Pope Francis’ choice in the first place. The decision to canonize the hundreds of Otranto martyrs was rubber-stamped by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, on Feb. 11 - the same day he announced his resignation.

    Slideshow: The election of Pope Francis

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    Cardinals from around the world gathered in the Vatican to elect the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

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    It was a departing act of a pontiff that had become concerned about the mounting discrimination suffered by Christian minorities living in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab spring.

    Pope Francis shares his predecessor’s concern. “By venerating the martyrs of Otranto” he said at Sunday’s canonization mass, “We ask God to protect the many Christians who in these times, and in many parts of the world, are still victims of violence”.

    The Vatican’s relationship with Islam took a nosedive in 2006 when Benedict – now the Pope Emeritus - enraged Muslims by quoting the 14th-century byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiogolos, who said: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

    It was an uncomfortable parting gift for his successor, who now faces an uphill struggle to rekindle ties with Islam.

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  • Did St. Patrick sell slaves to the Irish?

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    LONDON -- St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, may well have been a tax collector for the Romans who fled to Ireland where he could have traded slaves to pay his way, according to new research by a University of Cambridge academic published on Saturday.

    The generally accepted account of the saint's life, albeit based on scant evidence, says Patrick was abducted from western Britain as a teenager and forced into slavery in Ireland for six years during which time he developed a strong Christian faith.

    Afterwards, the account continues, he escaped his captors and went back to Britain before eventually returning to Ireland as a missionary.

    But Roy Flechner, from the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge, believes there are reasonable grounds to question the popular version which is based partly on Patrick's own words.

    "The problem with this account is that he was telling this story in response to accusations leveled against him that he fled to Ireland for financial gain," Flechner told Reuters in a telephone interview.

    "It's an inference that has been made long before in conventional scholarship."

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    According to the study, published on Saturday to coincide with St. Patrick's Day, the saint may have wanted to leave Britain in the early 400s to avoid the "onerous" duties of a "Decurion", or Roman official responsible for collecting taxes.

    Patrick's father was a Decurion and, when he decided to rid himself of the post by becoming a cleric, his responsibilities would have fallen to his son.

    Slaves were his 'liquid assets'
    At a time when Roman government in Britain was in decline, collecting and underwriting taxes would have been an unwelcome task, enough to prompt Patrick to emigrate, Flechner said.

    "It is likely that at least for a while he (Patrick) held an imperial office. One way or another, I think this would have been the catalyst for him leaving for Ireland."

    The academic also questioned Patrick's own account of escaping slavery in Ireland.

    "Once you escaped from slavery you lacked any legal status and anyone could imprison you and kill you, and this conflicts with what he said -- that he broke loose, crossed Ireland and then the Irish Sea to get back to Britain," he explained.

    "He might not even have been acknowledged as a free man in his native Britain and could have been enslaved again there."

    If Patrick had left Britain for Ireland of his own free will, the best way to take his wealth with him would be in the form of slaves, Flechner argued.

    Patrick himself said his family owned slaves, which was common for aristocratic families in this period.

    "Your property would have been hereditary and in the form of land, but if you had wanted to transport the value of the property, it is more likely you would have traded a more 'liquid asset', in this case slaves.

    "In a slightly later period where we do have more sources, slaves had become a very important social institution and quite ubiquitous in Ireland."

    Flechner conceded that it was difficult to be sure of any theory about a period of British history covered by so little reliable material.

    But he added that his study had the advantage of being "free from the more reverential accounts of St. Patrick that have been handed down in legend through the generations.

    "In this case we are seeing Patrick through the eyes of Roman law which offers a new perspective.

    "None of this is to say that Patrick was not a bishop or that he did not engage in missionary activity, but his primary motives for moving to Ireland were most likely to escape the poisoned chalice of his inherited position in Roman Britain."

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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