Vatican City: Pope Francis declared six Catholics as venerable servants of God on Thursday, moving them each one step closer to canonization.

In a decree signed on Jan. 19, the pope recognized the heroic virtue of an Italian stigmatist, four 20th-century priests, and a holy laywoman who spent much of her life in a sickbed. Each now needs a miracle attributed to his or her intercession to be approved by the Vatican in order to be beatified.

An Italian laywoman is among the new Venerables. Servant of God Bertilla Antoniazzi lived just 20 years, between 1944 and 1964, in Italy's Veneto. Admitted to Vicenza hospital when she was just nine years old due to severe dyspnoea caused by rheumatic endocarditis, the illness forced her to stay at home at all times.

With great strength of spirit, she understood that her mission was to console those who were suffering, and to bring sinners and souls closer to God through the offering of her life and infirmity. And she never closed in on herself.

She established friendly relations with doctors and nurses and intense correspondence with other sick people. In total trust in God in prayer, she never complained, not even in the last two particularly brutal years of her life as she battled her illness.

On a pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1963, she did not ask Our Lady for healing, but for holiness.

The decrees promulgated are regarding the heroic virtues of four men and two women, all hailing from Italy and Spain. These include:

- the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Miguel Costa y Llobera, Canon of the Cathedral Church of Majorca; born on 10 March 1854 in Pollensa (Spain) and died on 16 October 1922 in Majorca (Spain);

- the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Gaetano Francesco Mauro, diocesan priest, Founder of the Congregation of Rural Pious Workers Catechists; born on 13 April 1888 in Rogliano, Italy, and died in Montalto Uffugo, Italy, on 31 December 1969;

- the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Giovanni Barra, diocesan priest; born on 13 January 1914 in Riva di Pinerolo, Italy, and died in Turin, Italy, on 28 January 1975;

- the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Vicente López de Uralde Lazcano, professed priest of the Company of Mary; born on 22 January 1894 in Vitoria, Spain, and died in Cádiz, Spain, on 15 September 1990;

- the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Maria Margherita Diomira of the Incarnate Word (born Maria Allegri), professed Religious of the Congregation of the Established in the Charity of the Good Shepherd; born 26 April 1651 in Firenzuola, Italy, and died in Florence, Italy on 17 December 1677.