Every month, Pope Leo asks Catholics around the world to pray for a particular intention. This initiative is accompanied by a video in which the pontiff expresses the reasons why he has chosen that particular intention.
October: For mental health ministry
Let us pray that mental health ministry be established throughout the Church, helping to overcome the stigma and discrimination of persons with mental illnesses.
Feastday: October 1
Patron: of the Missions
Birth: 1873
Death: 1897
Generations of Catholics have admired this young saint, called her the "Little Flower", and found in her short life more inspiration for their own lives than in volumes by theologians.
Yet Therese died when she was 24, after having lived as cloistered Carmelite for less than ten years. She never went on missions, never founded a religious order, never performed great works. The only book of hers, published after her death, was an brief edited version of her journal called "Story of a Soul." (Collections of her letters and restored versions of her journals have been published recently.) But within 28 years of her death, the public demand was so great that she was canonized.
Over the years, some modern Catholics have turned away from her because they associate her with over- sentimentalized piety and yet the message she has for us is still as compelling and simple as it was almost a century ago.
Therese was born in France in 1873, the pampered daughter of a mother who had wanted to be a saint and a father who had wanted to be monk. The two had gotten married but determined they would be celibate until a priest told them that was not how God wanted a marriage to work! They must have followed his advice very well because they had nine children. The five children who lived were all daughters who were close all their lives.
Tragedy and loss came quickly to Therese when her mother died of breast cancer when she was four and a half years old. Her sixteen year old sister Pauline became her second mother -- which made the second loss even worse when Pauline entered the Carmelite convent five years later. A few months later, Therese became so ill with a fever that people thought she was dying.
The worst part of it for Therese was all the people sitting around her bed staring at her like, she said, "a string of onions." When Therese saw her sisters praying to statue of Mary in her room, Therese also prayed. She saw Mary smile at her and suddenly she was cured. She tried to keep the grace of the cure secret but people found out and badgered her with questions about what Mary was wearing, what she looked like. When she refused to give in to their curiosity, they passed the story that she had made the whole thing up.
Without realizing it, by the time she was eleven years old she had developed the habit of mental prayer. She would find a place between her bed and the wall and in that solitude think about God, life, eternity.
When her other sisters, Marie and Leonie, left to join religious orders (the Carmelites and Poor Clares, respectively), Therese was left alone with her last sister Celine and her father. Therese tells us that she wanted to be good but that she had an odd way of going about. This spoiled little Queen of her father's wouldn't do housework. She thought if she made the beds she was doing a great favor!
Every time Therese even imagined that someone was criticizing her or didn't appreciate her, she burst into tears. Then she would cry because she had cried! Any inner wall she built to contain her wild emotions crumpled immediately before the tiniest comment.
Therese wanted to enter the Carmelite convent to join Pauline and Marie but how could she convince others that she could handle the rigors of Carmelite life, if she couldn't handle her own emotional outbursts? She had prayed that Jesus would help her but there was no sign of an answer.
On Christmas day in 1886, the fourteen-year-old hurried home from church. In France, young children left their shoes by the hearth at Christmas, and then parents would fill them with gifts. By fourteen, most children outgrew this custom. But her sister Celine didn't want Therese to grow up. So they continued to leave presents in "baby" Therese's shoes.
As she and Celine climbed the stairs to take off their hats, their father's voice rose up from the parlor below. Standing over the shoes, he sighed, "Thank goodness that's the last time we shall have this kind of thing!"
Therese froze, and her sister looked at her helplessly. Celine knew that in a few minutes Therese would be in tears over what her father had said.
But the tantrum never came. Something incredible had happened to Therese. Jesus had come into her heart and done what she could not do herself. He had made her more sensitive to her father's feelings than her own.
She swallowed her tears, walked slowly down the stairs, and exclaimed over the gifts in the shoes, as if she had never heard a word her father said. The following year she entered the convent. In her autobiography she referred to this Christmas as her "conversion."
Therese be known as the Little Flower but she had a will of steel. When the superior of the Carmelite convent refused to take Therese because she was so young, the formerly shy little girl went to the bishop. When the bishop also said no, she decided to go over his head, as well.
Her father and sister took her on a pilgrimage to Rome to try to get her mind off this crazy idea. Therese loved it. It was the one time when being little worked to her advantage! Because she was young and small she could run everywhere, touch relics and tombs without being yelled at. Finally they went for an audience with the Pope. They had been forbidden to speak to him but that didn't stop Therese. As soon as she got near him, she begged that he let her enter the Carmelite convent. She had to be carried out by two of the guards!
But the Vicar General who had seen her courage was impressed and soon Therese was admitted to the Carmelite convent that her sisters Pauline and Marie had already joined. Her romantic ideas of convent life and suffering soon met up with reality in a way she had never expected. Her father suffered a series of strokes that left him affected not only physically but mentally. When he began hallucinating and grabbed for a gun as if going into battle, he was taken to an asylum for the insane. Horrified, Therese learned of the humiliation of the father she adored and admired and of the gossip and pity of their so-called friends. As a cloistered nun she couldn't even visit her father.
This began a horrible time of suffering when she experienced such dryness in prayer that she stated "Jesus isn't doing much to keep the conversation going." She was so grief-stricken that she often fell asleep in prayer. She consoled herself by saying that mothers loved children when they lie asleep in their arms so that God must love her when she slept during prayer.
She knew as a Carmelite nun she would never be able to perform great deeds. " Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love." She took every chance to sacrifice, no matter how small it would seem. She smiled at the sisters she didn't like. She ate everything she was given without complaining -- so that she was often given the worst leftovers. One time she was accused of breaking a vase when she was not at fault. Instead of arguing she sank to her knees and begged forgiveness. These little sacrifices cost her more than bigger ones, for these went unrecognized by others. No one told her how wonderful she was for these little secret humiliations and good deeds.
When Pauline was elected prioress, she asked Therese for the ultimate sacrifice. Because of politics in the convent, many of the sisters feared that the family Martin would taken over the convent. Therefore Pauline asked Therese to remain a novice, in order to allay the fears of the others that the three sisters would push everyone else around. This meant she would never be a fully professed nun, that she would always have to ask permission for everything she did. This sacrifice was made a little sweeter when Celine entered the convent after her father's death. Four of the sisters were now together again.
Therese continued to worry about how she could achieve holiness in the life she led. She didn't want to just be good, she wanted to be a saint. She thought there must be a way for people living hidden, little lives like hers. " I have always wanted to become a saint. Unfortunately when I have compared myself with the saints, I have always found that there is the same difference between the saints and me as there is between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and a humble grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by. Instead of being discouraged, I told myself: God would not make me wish for something impossible and so, in spite of my littleness, I can aim at being a saint. It is impossible for me to grow bigger, so I put up with myself as I am, with all my countless faults. But I will look for some means of going to heaven by a little way which is very short and very straight, a little way that is quite new.
" We live in an age of inventions. We need no longer climb laboriously up flights of stairs; in well-to-do houses there are lifts. And I was determined to find a lift to carry me to Jesus, for I was far too small to climb the steep stairs of perfection. So I sought in holy Scripture some idea of what this life I wanted would be, and I read these words: "Whosoever is a little one, come to me." It is your arms, Jesus, that are the lift to carry me to heaven. And so there is no need for me to grow up: I must stay little and become less and less."
She worried about her vocation: " I feel in me the vocation of the Priest. I have the vocation of the Apostle. Martyrdom was the dream of my youth and this dream has grown with me. Considering the mystical body of the Church, I desired to see myself in them all. Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was burning with love. I understood that Love comprised all vocations, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and places...in a word, that it was eternal! Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love...my vocation, at last I have found it...My vocation is Love!"
When an antagonist was elected prioress, new political suspicions and plottings sprang up. The concern over the Martin sisters perhaps was not exaggerated. In this small convent they now made up one-fifth of the population. Despite this and the fact that Therese was a permanent novice they put her in charge of the other novices.
Then in 1896, she coughed up blood. She kept working without telling anyone until she became so sick a year later everyone knew it. Worst of all she had lost her joy and confidence and felt she would die young without leaving anything behind. Pauline had already had her writing down her memories for journal and now she wanted her to continue -- so they would have something to circulate on her life after her death.
Her pain was so great that she said that if she had not had faith she would have taken her own life without hesitation. But she tried to remain smiling and cheerful -- and succeeded so well that some thought she was only pretending to be ill. Her one dream as the work she would do after her death, helping those on earth. "Upon my death I will let fall a shower of roses; I wish to spend my heaven in doing good upon the earth." She died on September 30, 1897 at the age of 24 years old. She herself felt it was a blessing God allowed her to die at exactly that age. she had always felt that she had a vocation to be a priest and felt God let her die at the age she would have been ordained if she had been a man so that she wouldn't have to suffer.
After she died, everything at the convent went back to normal. One nun commented that there was nothing to say about Therese. But Pauline put together Therese's writings (and heavily edited them, unfortunately) and sent 2000 copies to other convents. But Therese's "little way" of trusting in Jesus to make her holy and relying on small daily sacrifices instead of great deeds appealed to the thousands of Catholics and others who were trying to find holiness in ordinary lives. Within two years, the Martin family had to move because her notoriety was so great and by 1925 she had been canonized.
Therese of Lisieux is one of the patron saints of the missions, not because she ever went anywhere, but because of her special love of the missions, and the prayers and letters she gave in support of missionaries. This is reminder to all of us who feel we can do nothing, that it is the little things that keep God's kingdom growing.
By
Catholic Review
The Archdiocese of Baltimore is preparing for a milestone not seen in more than half a century: the ordination of 12 new priests in a single year.
One seminarian is expected to be ordained in January and 11 more in June, as the archdiocese’s number of men in priestly formation continues to climb.
The archdiocese now has 66 seminarians in formation, with 14 men entering this year alone. Representing 14 different parishes and ranging in age from 17 to 36, the newest seminarians are part of a yearslong increase that Church leaders attribute to prayer, intentional vocational outreach and stronger support from parishes.
The total number of seminarians is up from 28 in 2007 and 52 in 2020.
For Archbishop William E. Lori, who has led the archdiocese for 14 years, the growth is among the great joys of his tenure.
“This has not been sudden,” said Archbishop Lori, who ordained five men to the priesthood this year. “It’s been building every year, and this is due to a lot of people praying before the Blessed Sacrament. It’s due to a good vocations team. It’s also due to pastors who are encouraging vocations in their parishes – and to parents who are generously open to the possibility that their son might have a priestly vocation.”
The surge has filled both of the archdiocese’s propaedeutic houses, in Emmitsburg and Baltimore, to capacity. Three of this year’s new seminarians will spend their propaedeutic year – a foundational period of prayer, discernment and human formation – at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore instead, taking part in the Source of All Hope urban missionary program serving people experiencing homelessness.
Father Steven Roth, vocations director and associate vicar for clergy for the archdiocese, said the growing number of men discerning the priesthood is encouraging, but he’s even more proud of the caliber of those stepping forward.
“These are hardworking, talented guys who really could do anything else, and they’re freely choosing to discern whether the Lord is calling them to be a priest,” Father Roth said.
The influx is already changing pastoral life in the archdiocese, allowing new placements in ministries that have gone without priests for years – including high school and college chaplaincies and parishes that haven’t had an associate pastor in a generation.
Depending on a man’s educational background, formation for the priesthood can take up to nine years, Father Roth said. The lengthy process reflects the Church’s desire to form the whole person.
Alongside academic studies, seminarians receive spiritual direction, gain experience in parish ministry and meet regularly with priests and formators as they discern their vocation. They undergo background checks before being accepted into the program.
Formation is also a time of discernment, Father Roth explained, both for the Church and for the seminarians. The goal is to give men the time and support they need to understand God’s call and prepare for ministry.
“We don’t rush it,” Father Roth said. “By the time that the Lord is calling them to be a priest, they’re ready and capable and able to say yes to that call.”
Father Roth is assisted by Father Lenin Suarez, associate director of vocations, whom Father Roth said has been building up the office’s online resources. In an increasingly digital age, the goal is to make essential information available to men discerning a vocation before they ever sit down with a priest – giving them a way to work through questions they might be hesitant to raise in person.
Veimar Martinez, 18, a parishioner of St. John in Westminster and a graduate of Westminster High School, is among the archdiocese’s newest seminarians.
Serving as an usher at his home parish was “life-changing,” he said, giving him an inside look at both the parish’s inner workings and the liturgy itself. He later became involved with the Boys and Girls Club, working with young people from a range of backgrounds.
“A full circle for me was that my mom taught me my faith, and then here I am teaching other kids the faith,” Martinez said.
He traces his first step toward discernment to 2024, when a confession led to a penance of an hour in eucharistic adoration.
“I felt I was in a relatively rough spot at the time, and then when I stepped in there, everything I felt was like a weight was lifted off me,” he said. “It felt lighter. I felt warm. I felt loved in that room, and eucharistic adoration is something that’s very important to me.”
Father Roth pointed to archdiocesan programs including the Quo Vadis retreat, designed to help young men listen for God’s voice, and a new offshoot introduced this year, Quo Vadis Beyond, aimed at recent high school graduates.
Those efforts are reaching an increasingly diverse group of young men.
For the first time in many years, two African Americans have entered priestly formation. While several Black men from Africa have been ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Baltimore in recent years, it has been more than three decades since an African American was ordained for the archdiocese.
Father Roth recalled a visit with young African American parishioners years ago. They told him they hadn’t realized they were needed and they didn’t know they were wanted.
“I thought we really need to fix this,” he said. “We have such a diverse archdiocese that we celebrate, and I just want to be sure that our clergy reflects that diversity.”
Despite the growth, Father Roth warned that now is not the time to “rest on our laurels.” He encouraged constant prayer for religious vocations and said he sees every Catholic as a vocations director.
“I would encourage people that when they’re at church, at Mass or different events, and they see a young person who they think has the qualities that they like – that they see in their pastor as well – to not be afraid to go up to the person and say, ‘Have you ever thought about becoming a priest?'” he said.
Jenna Mattern contributed to this story.
By Alessandro Di Bussolo
Pope Leo is following “with deep concern” the situation in Tigray, a region of Ethiopia, and in the neighboring areas of Afar and Amhara, “where hostilities have once again broken out.” In English, at the end of the General Audience, before greeting the Italian faithful, he delivered this appeal to the parties involved in the conflict:
“I extend my heartfelt plea to all parties to choose the path of dialogue. Armed conflict never solves problems but only worsens them, leaving in its wake a trail of death, destruction, and resentment. Only honest engagement can lay the foundations for lasting peace.”
The Pope’s “fervent hope” is that the international community “will offer its generous and timely contribution, to ensuring that all humanitarian aid be provided to those in need.”
The situation in Tigray has become increasingly tense. In recent hours, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s main political force, which fought against the federal government during the 2020–2022 Tigray War, and the Tigray Defense Forces (TDF), the Tigrayan military forces that fought the Ethiopian army during that same war, have intensified conflict with Ethiopian military forces.
Numerous clashes have been reported along the Tekeze River, west of Tigray, in the Wolkayt area, on the border with the Afar region, and in various parts of Amhara.
The death toll has yet to be independently verified. According to the Ethiopian army, 700 Tigrayan fighters were reportedly killed over two days.
Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) reported that between September 22 and 25, more than 400 wounded people arrived at hospitals in Korem and Alamata, while another 300 were admitted to hospitals in Suhul and Shire, in northwestern Tigray.
In the areas hardest hit by the conflict, the delivery of humanitarian aid also remains difficult: many roads have been cut off, while in the north, internet and telephone connections have been completely disrupted, making it impossible for aid workers to coordinate their efforts.
Politically, the Ethiopian government accuses neighboring Eritrea of supporting the TPLF and other opposition forces, while the Eritrean government strongly denies any involvement in the escalation of violence.
Meanwhile, the European Union has once again described the situation as rapidly deteriorating, both politically and militarily, announcing immediate diplomatic and humanitarian measures in an attempt to halt the resumption of the conflict, which risks setting the entire region ablaze
By Isabella H. de Carvalho
The Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris and "the tragedy it has endured” can “symbolically shed light on this entire Apostolic Journey” to France, “offering a perspective that I would summarize in one word: rebirth,” Pope Leo XIV said during the Wednesday General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on September 30.
Pope Leo XIV visited Paris, Lourdes and the northeastern city of Metz during his Apostolic Journey to France from September 25 to 28. During the visit he met thousands of young people in a stadium, emphasized the importance of defending life at all its stages, and appealed for peace in Europe and across the world.
On the first day of his Apostolic Journey, he celebrated Vespers in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, which was destroyed in April 2019 due to a fire and was then restored and reopened in December 2024.
In his catechesis, Pope Leo thanked all those who welcomed him and participated and emphasized how the rebirth of the Cathedral helps us to understand his whole Apostolic Journey and the fruits it could bring for the future.
Read the full text of the Pope's catechesis at the General Audience
The Pope underlined how the disaster of the fire at Notre-Dame and its subsequent rebuilding “sparked a positive reaction at every level,” such as for example the restoration process.
It was an example of collaboration “between the Church, the State, public institutions and civil society,” and helped make the most of “both the generosity of benefactors and the expertise of professionals and skilled workers,” he explained.
This "synergy for the common good" should become "the norm for institutions, political and social forces, and all those with civil and economic responsibilities", Pope said. He explained that he conveyed this same message in his meeting with the French authorities and his address at UNESCO.
For the Pope “the fundamental criterion upon which such collaboration must be based” is “the dignity of the human person.”
Pope Leo also drew a parallel between the Vespers in Notre-Dame and the “unforgettable” prayer vigil he participated in shortly after with 80,000 young people in the Stade de France stadium in Paris.
“Two completely different locations," he explained, "yet two complementary events, almost united spiritually. What united them? The Church, which is not made up of stones or cement, but of people who love Jesus Christ because they have been loved by Him".
At the stadium there was the “new French generation,” not 'new' so much because of their age but because of their “spirit” and their “freedom of heart and faith,” the Pope said.
There was singing and shouting but also silence and listening and “attentive and emotional faces, which revealed hearts yearning for truth and love,” the Pope continued, adding that “the Vigil was a great sign of hope.”
For the Pope this same hope was manifested in his visit to Maison Bakhita, a welcome center for migrants, “where people commit themselves every day to serving the dignity of the human person with love.”
Another sign of renewal the Pope pointed to was the growing number of baptisms of young people and adults in France in recent years. During his visit he encouraged them by participating in a provincial synodal assembly underway in Paris, which is responding to “this beautiful ‘surprise’ from God.”
Pope Leo then also recalled his Mass in the central Parisian square Place de la Concorde with around 700,000 people, who filled the iconic Avenue des Champs Élysées, up to the Arc de Triomphe and beyond.
“At the moment of Communion, everyone was able to receive the Eucharist, which was distributed everywhere," he said. "This is the true reconstruction, the restoration of the Church that only God can bring about, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary".
The Pope then turned to his “pilgrimage” to Lourdes and its famous Marian shrine, “a sanctuary of the civilization of love” and the second leg of his Apostolic Journey.
“In Lourdes, the Lord, through the maternal care of the Virgin Mary, conveys to everyone, pilgrims and especially those who are sick in body and spirit, a message of hope and rebirth,” he explained.
“A message that I wished to openly reaffirm: every human life, in whatever condition, even in the most extreme frailty, retains its inviolable dignity and deserves to be cared for, accompanied and relieved of suffering with human compassion and with the aid of the means offered by science.”
He also recalled his meeting with a group of victims of abuse, in which he asked them to help him express to other victims his wish, and that of the Church, “to listen to them and walk alongside them as they seek healing, acknowledging the pain inflicted upon their lives and working to prevent abuse.”
In Lourdes the Pope also participated in a torchlit procession and rosary, which is done every day at the Shrine. In his greetings to the Italian and German speaking faithful during the General Audience he insisted on the importance of praying the rosary for peace during this upcoming month of October.
Lastly, the Pope touched upon his visit to Metz – “a region of France and Europe ravaged by the Second World War” – and the third and final leg of his Journey.
He cited the figure of Robert Schuman, one of the founders of the European Union who spent much of his life in Metz and promoted peace after WWII.
“Contemporary Europe was indeed born as a project for peace in the wake of the destruction wrought by war. We might say that what happened to Notre-Dame in Paris with the fire was what had happened to Europe during the Second World War,” the Pope reflected.
“And Europe was reborn, founded on those principles of democracy, solidarity and fraternity amongst peoples, which owe much to its Christian roots. Even today, it is on these foundations and with this vital ‘lifeblood’ that the European project can be renewed, in a far more globalized world.”
In this regard he also pointed to the importance of interreligious dialogue, recalling his meeting in Metz with representatives of various faiths where they signed the “Metz Appeal” for dialogue and peace.
Regarding the Second World War, in his greetings to Italian-speaking faithful, Pope Leo XIV also mentioned the beatification in Bologna last Sunday, September 27 of three martyred priests who were killed in 1944 by Nazi troops. “The supreme sacrifice of these ministers of God shows today’s Christians the courage to stand by their brothers and sisters, especially in times of trial,” he added.
The Pope concluded his catechesis by recalling the motto of the trip - “So that the world may have life” - and expressing the hope that his Journey might bring “abundant and lasting fruit.”
In his greetings to the Portuguese-speaking pilgrims he reiterated this idea: “May the public witness of love for Jesus Christ that we have seen in France be an inspiration to the entire Church. Let us not hide our faith!”
In his words to the English-speaking faithful the Pope also offered “a special greeting to the seminarians from the Pontifical Irish College" and the pilgrims attending the diaconate ordination of the Pontifical North American College on October 1.
