Leo says holiness is for everyone

On All Saints, Leo says holiness is for everyone

At the Angelus on the Solemnity of All Saints, Leo said the feast celebrates not only those the Church has recognized as saints, but “the countless others who have not been formally recognized but are known to God.” Holiness “cannot be reduced to any calculation,” he said; the saints brought forth “actions and choices of love that transcend the calculations of greed and the arrogance of evil, which at times seems to prevail.” “This is the hope-filled message of today’s feast: God sees the good that we do not see, knows stories that we do not know and reaches hearts to which we have no access.” After the prayer, he announced that he will celebrate Mass at the Verano Cemetery on Monday afternoon for All Souls’ Day and asked prayers “for the departed, especially those whom no one remembers.” — Full text (vatican.va) · Vatican News

Georgia martyrs beatified in Savannah

Five Spanish Franciscans killed in 1597 while serving the Indigenous Guale people on the coast of present-day Georgia were beatified Saturday in Savannah, with Cardinal Frank Leo of Toronto presiding as papal legate. The friars — Pedro de Corpa, Blas Rodríguez, Miguel de Añon, Antonio de Badajóz, and Francisco de Veráscola — died after an uprising that followed Corpa’s opposition to a Guale leader taking a second wife, according to Vatican News. At Sunday’s Angelus, Leo said they “responded generously to the Lord’s call to evangelize the peoples of the Americas, even to the point of giving their lives,” and asked their intercession “for all missionaries of the Gospel.” — Vatican News · Vatican News (Angelus appeals)

Leo hopes Oleshky operation opens a path to peace

Leo welcomed the humanitarian operation this week that evacuated hundreds of civilians from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Oleshky under a rare ceasefire. “I hope that the cooperation between the parties, which made this necessary humanitarian act possible, will strengthen the desire for dialogue and lead to new concrete peace initiatives,” he said after the Angelus, entrusting to Mary “all those throughout the world who are suffering because of war.” — Vatican News · Also: Civilians reach Ukraine after Oleshky evacuation (Vatican News)

Also today

• Pope Leo mourns Archbishop Richard Alarcón of Cusco — Vatican News. The archbishop died Friday at 74 after a long illness, two weeks before Leo’s Nov. 15 visit to Cusco, which he had been preparing; Leo called him a “selfless pastor.” His coadjutor, Archbishop Lizardo Estrada Herrera, OSA, succeeds him.
• Leo to Villanova and Notre Dame (full text, vatican.va) — Ahead of today’s “Eternal City Tip-Off” games in Rome, Leo told about 7,000 students, alumni, and supporters that athletics can teach cooperation, “increasingly necessary in an age marked by the distance that can be created by technology.” · Vatican News
• “I went undercover at extremist religious sect in Kent where Holocaust denial lives on” — Dan Esson, KentOnline. An undercover reporter recorded a priest repeating Holocaust denial at the Broadstairs base of the “SSPX Resistance,” a breakaway group founded by the late Richard Williamson. It is separate from the Society of St. Pius X itself, which expelled Williamson in 2012.
• Laudato Si’ Action Platform report to be presented Wednesday — Holy See Press Office. Sr. Alessandra Smerilli and others will present the platform’s fifth annual report on Nov. 4.
• Papal Prayer for November: the Proper Use of Wealth — Ariane Sroubek, Where Peter Is. Leo’s prayer intention this month asks that we resist selfishness and use what we have in the service of others.