"We need witnesses," said Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, at the Ateneo de Manila University on March 10.

He said four Missionaries of Charity nuns who were shot dead by terrorists in Yemen last week were "witnesses ... who testified with their faith."

Speaking before a gathering of Catholic educators, theologians, religious superiors, and seminarians, Cardinal Versaldi said "sanctity is the more convincing way" to attract people to the church.

"You must be saints," the cardinal said when asked by a student how priests and the religious can put into practice what they learn from the university.

Cardinal Versaldi was in Manila to deliver the keynote address of a two-day international theological symposium sponsored by the Jesuit-run Loyola School of Theology.

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