Pope Leo’s beautiful reflection on the saints
Pope Leo XIV’s Angelus reflection for All Saints’ Day focused on both canonized saints and the countless others known only to God. He emphasized that God sees good deeds, knows people’s stories, and reaches hearts beyond human understanding. All Saints’ Day fell on a Sunday that year, prompting the reflection before the midday Angelus.
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Pope Leo XIV used his All Saints’ Day reflection to celebrate both formally recognized saints and the countless people known only to God, describing holiness as a calling open to everyone. He said the saints’ lives of love, mercy, justice, forgiveness, and peacemaking offer a sign of God’s Kingdom and a reason for hope.
Leo described the saints as a “countless family” who followed Jesus by making their lives a gift to God and their neighbors. Referring to the biblical image of a multitude from every nation and people, he said the feast honors not only those recognized by the Church but also those whose holiness is known to God alone.
Drawing on the Beatitudes, the Pope portrayed the saints as poor in spirit yet rich in God’s love, grieving yet consoled, meek amid violence, and hungry for justice. He also highlighted their readiness to forgive, their peacemaking, and their endurance of persecution through faith and charity.
Leo said holiness cannot be measured by numbers or calculations. He described the saints’ good works and loving choices as acts that surpass greed and evil, and as signs of the Kingdom of God—one that is coming and, in Jesus’ teaching, already present.
He emphasized that saints come from varied backgrounds, cultures, and walks of life, and that holiness is “not a privilege reserved for a few” but a universal vocation. The feast’s message, he said, is that God sees good deeds and knows people’s stories and hearts even when others do not.
“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.”
Leo concluded by asking the Virgin Mary to accompany people on the path to holiness and urged them not to tire of fostering peace, both in major situations and in everyday life.
Holiness extends beyond the Church’s formal recognition of saints
Yes. The Church’s formal list of canonized saints is not a complete census of everyone who became holy. Canonization and beatification publicly honor particular people as examples of Christian life and, in the case of saints, as intercessors; they do not imply that holiness exists only among those whose causes have been formally examined. Pope John Paul II spoke explicitly of “anonymous saints known only to him”—people whose quiet fidelity and love served God and neighbor without becoming widely known.
A great multitude: not only the saints and blesseds we honour during the liturgical year, but also the anonymous saints known only to him.
Holiness is first God’s work, not simply a human achievement. The Church is holy because Christ is present in her, the Holy Spirit is at work, and she has been given means of sanctification. Yet the Church’s holiness is “real though imperfect” in her earthly members: Christians are called to holiness, but they do not all live that calling perfectly. Pope Francis likewise describes holiness as allowing God’s love and action to work in a person, and points to ordinary witnesses—parents, workers, young people, pastors, religious, the poor, the sick, and those who suffer faithfully.
Formal recognition and holiness therefore need to be distinguished. The Church publicly honors some people as saints and blesseds, while also acknowledging other witnesses at different stages of recognition, including Venerables and Servants of God. Those categories concern the Church’s public recognition of particular lives; they do not set the limits of God’s holiness or tell us that only recognized people reached heaven.
Nor does this mean that everyone who dies is a saint in the same sense. Catholic teaching speaks of the communion of the pilgrim Church on earth, those undergoing purification, and the blessed in heaven; the Church does not presume that every deceased person is already in glory. The point is more modest and hopeful: many people may have lived in God’s grace and reached holiness without being formally named by the Church. Their lives may be known only to God.
The practical consequence is that the saints officially honored by the Church are not distant exceptions to Christian life. They are known examples of the holiness to which all the baptized are called, while countless less visible lives also bear witness to God’s grace. As Benedict XVI emphasized, holiness is not a privilege for a few but the vocation of all the baptized, and some holy people live apparently ordinary lives whose names are known only to God.