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The Vatican has beatified a Congolese customs worker who was killed for refusing a bribe, offering young people in a country rife with corruption a new symbol of holiness.

Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the head of the Vatican’s saint-making office, presided over the beatification ceremony for Floribèrt Bwana Chui Bin Kositi at St. Paul Outside the Walls, one of Rome’s basilicas, on Sunday.

The event attracted Congolese pilgrims and much of Rome’s Congolese Catholic community.

They will also attend a special audience on Monday with Pope Leo XIV.

Mr Kositi was kidnapped and killed in 2007after he refused to allow rancid rice from Rwanda to be transported across the border to Goma, a city in eastern Congo.

As an official with the Congolese government’s customs quality control office, the 26-year-old was aware of the dangers of resisting bribes offered to public officials. However, he also recognised the dangers of allowing spoiled food to be distributed to the most vulnerable.

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Jean Jacques Yack hangs a photo of Floribèrt Bwana Chui Bin Kositi, a Congolese man killed for fighting corruption in 2007 (AP)

“On that day, those mafiosi found themselves in front of a young man who, in the name of the Gospel, said ‘No.’ He opposed,” his friend Aline Manani said.

“Floribèrt, I think that for me personally, I would say for all young people, is a role model.”

Pope Francis recognised Mr Kositi as a martyr of the faith in late 2024, setting him on the path to beatification and to possibly become Congo’s first saint. The move fit into the pope’s broader understanding of martyr as a social justice concept, allowing those deemed to have been killed for doing God’s work and following the Gospel to be considered for sainthood.

“Our country almost holds the gold medal for corruption among the countries of the world,” Goma Bishop Willy Ngumbi told reporters.

“Here, corruption is truly endemic. So, if we could at least learn from this boy’s life that we must all fight corruption … I think that would be very important.”

Transparency International in 2024 gave Congo one of the poorest marks on its corruption perception index, ranking it 163 out of 180 countries surveyed and 20 on the organisation’s 0-100 scale, with 0 highly corrupt and 100 very clean.

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Aline Minani holds a photo of Floribèrt Bwana Chui Bin Kositi (AP)

The beatification has brought joy to Goma at a time of anguish. Violent fighting between government forces and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels has led to the death of thousands of people and the rebels’ capture of the city has exacerbated what already was one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.

It has renewed the hopes of many in the country of more than 100 million people whose development has been stifled by chronic corruption, which Francis railed about during his 2023 visit to the country.

Speaking at the Kinshasa stadium then, Francis said Mr Kositi “could easily have turned a blind eye; nobody would have found out, and he might even have gotten ahead as a result. But since he was a Christian, he prayed. He thought of others and he chose to be honest, saying no to the filth of corruption”.

The Italian priest who spearheaded Mr Kositi’s sainthood case, the Rev. Francesco Tedeschi, knew him through their work with the Saint’Egidio Community. He broke down on Saturday as he recounted Mr Kositi’s example and Francis’s call for the church to recognise the ordinary holiness in the “saints next door”.

“In the end, this was what Floribert was, because he was just a boy,” Rev. Tedeschi said as he began weeping.

Mr Kositi’s decision to not accept the spoiled food was inspired by the Christian idea of the dignity of everyone, especially the poor, Rev. Tedeschi said.

Being declared a martyr exempts Mr Kositi from the requirement that a miracle must be attributed to his intercession before he is beatified, thereby fast-tracking the process to get to the first step of sainthood.

The Vatican must, however, confirm a miracle attributed to his intercession for him to be canonised, a process that can take years or more.