The very formal relics, present in reliquaries with a red-wax seal, were set at the feet of a statue of Mary during the Mass. Most were what the church traditionally described as "first-class" relics: a piece of the actual physical remains of the saint, often bone fragments.

But Pope Francis himself used other items -- traditionally known as "second-class" relics -- that previously had used by two of the new saints: He carried in procession the crosier of St. Paul VI and wore his pallium; he also wore the blood-stained cincture, a rope belt, that St. Romero was wearing when he was assassinated while celebrating Mass in 1980. And for the Eucharist, he used a chalice that had belonged to St. Paul VI.

The formal reliquary for St. Paul VI was a glass vase containing the blood-specked undershirt he was wearing in November 1970 when a Bolivian artist stabbed him at the Manila airport.

The contents of the other reliquaries were:

-- For St. Romero, a bone fragment.

-- For St. Francesco Spinelli, a bone from his foot.

-- For St. Vincenzo Romano, a vertebra.

-- For St. Nunzio Sulprizio, a bone fragment from his finger.

-- For St. Catherine Kasper, a bone fragment from her back.

-- For St. Nazaria Ignacia March Mesa, a lock of her hair.