In the News

WORLD

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI gave Catholics four news saints Sunday, bestowing the honor on a 19th century nun who struggled in the American frontier, a bishop who tended to the wounded during the Mexican Revolution and two Italian clergy.

French-born Mother Theodore Guerin endured harsh conditions on the American frontier and resisted the objections of a local bishop in pursuing her dream of establishing Catholic education for pioneers. She established a college for women in Indiana, which enrolled its first student in 1841.

The pope also elevated to sainthood Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia, a missionary who risked his life to tend to the wounded during the Mexican Revolution, sometimes disguising himself as a street vendor or a musician.

Also joining the ranks of sainthood was Italian Rev. Filippo Smaldone, who pioneered education for the deaf and founded an order of nuns, the Congregation of the Salesian Sisters of the Sacred Hearts.

The other Italian, Rosa Venerini, was also a social pioneer, advocating education for young girls in Italy. Venerini, who died in 1728, founded the Congregation of the Holy Venerini Teachers order of nuns and pushed to establish the first public schools for girls in Italy.

“We register them in the roll call of the saints and we establish that in all the Church they will be devotedly honored among the saints,” Benedict said as he read the canonization ritual in Latin.

NATION

WASHINGTON – The Census Bureau projects that America’s population will hit 300 million at 7:46 a.m. Tuesday. The projection is based on estimates for births, deaths and net immigration that add up to one new American every 11 seconds.

The estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are included in official population estimates, though many demographers believe they are undercounted.

The population reached its last milestone, 200 million, in 1967. That translates into a 50 percent increase in 39 years.

During the same period, the number of households nearly doubled, the number motor vehicles more than doubled, and the miles driven in those vehicles nearly tripled.

The average household size has shrunk from 3.3 people to 2.6 people, and the share of households with only one person has jumped from less than 16 percent to about 27 percent.

STATE & LOCAL

RICHMOND – Republican Sen. George Allen and his Democratic challenger, Jim Webb, are still locked in a very close race, according to a statewide poll published Sunday.

Allen was favored by 49 percent of those surveyed last week and Webb was the choice of 47 percent, the Washington Post poll found. Two percent supported independent Gail Parker and 2 percent were undecided.

The results are within the poll’s sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The poll is the third independent statewide survey in about two weeks to show the race either tied or within the margin of error. An Oct. 6 Gallup poll showed Allen at 48 percent and Webb at 45, and a Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. poll on Sept. 29 showed both at 43 percent.

The Post conducted telephone interviews with 1,004 randomly selected likely Virginia voters from Oct. 10 to 12. It was the newspaper’s first poll on the Virginia Senate race.