Pope: Dioceses & Churches should commemorate their own saints each year

by CNS · November 19, 2024

A pilgrim wears a scarf featuring an image of St. Elena Guerra ahead of her canonisation Mass, presided over by Pope Francis, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Oct. 20, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

By Justin McLellan, CNS – Starting in the Holy Year 2025, local churches worldwide will annually honour the saints, blesseds and other holy figures connected to their communities, Pope Francis announced.

“It seems important to me that all particular churches commemorate their saints and blesseds on a single date, as well as the venerables and servants of God of their respective territories,” he wrote in a letter published Nov. 16. “Therefore, I urge the particular churches, starting from the coming Jubilee of 2025, to remember and honour these figures of holiness, every year on Nov. 9.”

While all saints are celebrated on fixed dates on the liturgical calendar, the pope said that local churches should commemorate their own holy figures both within and outside the liturgy to promote “those figures who have characterised the local Christian path and spirituality.”

The letter stated that pastoral guidelines to facilitate the initiative should be developed by bishops’ conferences worldwide.

Pope Francis wrote that “everyone can recognise in many people they meet along the way witnesses of the Christian virtues, in particular faith, hope and charity,” praising the example of couples, workers, young people, pastors and men and women religious who live out the faith in their daily lives.

“We cannot forget the poor, the sick, the suffering who in their weakness have found support in the divine Master. It is about that ‘everyday’ holiness ‘next door,’ in which the church scattered throughout the world has always been rich,” he wrote.

The pope said that Christians are “called to allow ourselves to be inspired by these models of holiness,” in particular the examples of the church’s martyrs, saints and blesseds.

The many processes for beatification and canonization currently underway “show how much the witness of holiness is also present in our time in which the great witnesses to the faith shine like stars,” he said. They have “marked the experience of the particular churches and, at the same time, have been fruitful throughout history.”

“They are all our friends, companions on the road, who help us realise our baptismal vocation to the full and show us the most beautiful face of the church, which is holy and the mother of the saints,” the pope wrote.