Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square – World Mission Sunday, 2025 – and canonized seven new saints: Ignatius Choukrallah Maloyan, Peter To Rot, Vincenza Maria Poloni (née Luigia), Maria del Monte Carmelo Rendiles Martínez, Maria Troncatti, José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, and Bartolo Longo.

In his homily, the pontiff took as his starting point the question Jesus poses to his disciples in the Gospel reading: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

“[T]wo temptations test our faith,” Leo said, “the first draws strength from the scandal of evil, leading us to think that God does not hear the cries of the oppressed and has no pity for the innocent who suffer.”

“The second temptation,” Leo said, “is the claim that God must act as we want him to: prayer then gives way to a command to God, to teach him how to be just and effective.”

“When we hear the cries of those in difficulty,” Leo said, “let us ask ourselves, are we witnesses to the Father’s love, as Christ was to all?”

“He is the humble one who calls the arrogant to conversion, the just one who makes us just,” He continued. “We see all this in the lives of the new Saints,” Leo also said, “they are not heroes or champions of some ideal, but authentic men and women.”

The seven people raised to the honor of the altars on World Mission Sunday 2025 gave rather gave heroic witness in and through the muddy business of life lived day-in, day-out.

Maloyan was an Armenian Catholic archbishop and martyr of the Ottoman persecution that became the Armenian genocide in the wake of WWI and the revolution that created modern Turkey, who refused to convert to Islam and paid for his refusal with his life.

To Rot was a layman and a catechist in Papua New Guinea during the Japanese occupation, who defied his erstwhile Japanese overlords’ restrictions on his teaching work and resisted pressure to abandon the practice of the faith for years before the Japanese  executed him in 1945.

Poloni was the 19^th century co-foundress – with Bl. Charles Steeb, a German convert from Lutheranism – of the Sisters of Mercy of Verona.

Rendiles Martinez was a Venezuelan religious sister who founded the Servants of Jesus in 1965, as the Vatican Council II was drawing to a close.

Troncatti was an Italian missionary sister of St. John Bosco who died in a plane crash after a lifetime of dedicated service in Ecuador.

Hernandez Cisneros was also Venezuelan, a medical doctor and 3^rd Order Franciscan renowned for his charity toward the poor.

Longo was a 19^th century lawyer born in what was then the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, who more than dabbled in Satanism before experiencing a radical conversion to Christ and taking the name, Rosario, as a Dominican tertiary, founding a confraternity of Marian devotion, and reviving Marian devotion through a renovation of the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompei.

“These faithful friends of Christ are martyrs for their faith, like Bishop Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan and catechist Peter To Rot,” Leo said. “[T]hey are evangelizers and missionaries, like Sister Maria Troncatti.”

“They are charismatic founders,” Leo said, “like Sister Vincenza Maria Poloni and Sister Maria del Monte Carmelo Rendiles Martínez,” and “benefactors of humanity, like Bartolo Longo and José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros.”

“May their intercession assist us in our trials and their example inspire us in our shared vocation to holiness,” Leo went on to say. “As we journey towards this goal, let us pray without ceasing, and continue in what we have learned and firmly believe.”

“Faith on earth,” Leo concluded, “thus sustains the hope for heaven.”