SAO PAULO, Brazil — Pope Benedict XVI canonized an 18th-century monk — a friar who handed out tiny rice-paper pills inscribed with a prayer — as Brazil’s first native-born saint Friday, as hundreds of thousands cheered and waved flags from all corners of South America.

Seated on a throne of Brazilian hardwood and surrounded by Latin American bishops and choirs of hundreds, Benedict pronounced the sainthood of Antonio de Sant’Anna Galvao, the Franciscan monk who is credited by the church with 5,000 miracle cures.

The canonization makes Galvao the first native-born saint from the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, home to more than 120 million of the planet’s 1.1 billion Catholics.

“Do you realize how big this is?” asked Herminia Fernandes, who joined the multitude for the open-air Mass. “It’s huge, this pope is visiting Brazil for the first time and at the same time he is giving us a saint. It’s a blessing.”

Friar Galvao, who died in 1822, began a tradition among Brazilian Catholics of handing out tiny rice-paper pills, inscribed with a Latin prayer, to people seeking cures for everything from cancer to kidney stones.

Although doctors and even some Catholic clergy dismiss the pills as placebos or superstitious fakery, cloistered nuns still toil in the Sao Paulo monastery where Galvao is buried, preparing thousands of the Tic Tac-sized pills for free daily distribution. Each one carries these words: “After birth, the Virgin remained intact. Mother of God, intercede on our behalf.”

After canonizing Friar Galvao, the pope hugged Sandra Grossi de Almeida, 37, and her son Enzo, 7. She is one of two Brazilian women certified by the Vatican as miracles justifying the sainthood. She had a uterine malformation that should have made it impossible for her to carry a child for more than four months, but after taking the pills, she gave birth to Enzo.