St. Leonard of Noblac was a Frank courtier in the court of Clovis. He and the king converted to Christianity through the example of St. Remigius. 

After his conversion, Leonard gave up worldly pleasures, including the offer of a See, to live a life of simplicity and preaching. He entered a monastery at Orleans, inspiring his brother, St. Lifiard, to leave the King’s court and build a monastery at Meun. 

Finding the monastery not as secluded, Leonard went to live in the forest of Limousin, eating herbs and wild fruits. He converted many of the people he met, and built an oratory for him to pray. His holiness inspired many, and many people wanted to live with him, so a monastery was built there. 

Leonard had a great compassion for prisoners, and worked to release many and convert them. 

Around 559, he died of natural causes. Many of his followers dedicated churches to him across Europe, and traveled to his tomb to pray to him. One town in Bavaria has recorded 4,000 favors granted through prayers to St. Leonard.

Wis. 6:12–16 / Ps. 63:2–8 / 1 Thess. 4:13–17 / Mt. 25:1–13

According to marriage customs of Jesus’ day, a bride was first “betrothed” to her husband but continued for a time to live with her family. Then, at the appointed hour, some months later, the groom would come to claim her, leading her family and bridal party to the wedding feast that would celebrate and inaugurate their new life together.

This is the background to the parable of the last judgment we hear in today’s Gospel.

In the parable’s symbolism, Jesus is the Bridegroom (see Mark 2:19). In this, he fulfills God’s ancient promise to join himself forever to his chosen people as a husband cleaves to his bride (see Hosea 2:16–20). The virgins of the bridal party represent us, the members of the Church.

We were “betrothed” to Jesus in baptism (see 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:25–27) and are called to lives of holiness and devotion until he comes again to lead us to the heavenly wedding feast at the end of time (see Revelation 19:7–9; 21:1–4).

As St. Paul warns in today’s Epistle, Jesus is coming again, though we know not the day nor the hour.

We need to keep vigil throughout the dark night of this time in which our Bridegroom seems long delayed. We need to keep our souls’ lamps filled with the oil of perseverance and desire for God, virtues that are extolled in today’s First Reading and Psalm.

We are to seek him in love, meditating upon his kindness, calling upon his name, striving to be ever more worthy of him, to be found without spot or blemish when he comes.

If we do this, we will be counted as wise and the oil for our lamps will not run dry (see 1 Kings 17:16). We will perceive the Bridegroom, the Wisdom of God (see Proverbs 8:22–31, 35; 9:1–5), hastening toward us, beckoning us to the table he has prepared, the rich banquet that will satisfy our souls.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (OSV News) — Pope Leo XIV departed Rome for Uruguay on the morning of Nov. 6 at the start of a 12-day trip to South America, the longest international journey of his pontificate, a little over three weeks after undergoing surgery for lung cancer.

The Nov. 6-17 trip will be his first visit to Latin America since his election as pope, bringing him back to the continent that shaped his life and ministry, first as a missionary priest then bishop in Peru, where he will spend the final and longest leg of the trip.

The papal plane, a chartered ITA Airways plane, took off from Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport at 7:05 a.m. Rome time at the start of the apostolic journey to Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru.

The 13 hour and 30 minute flight will bring the pope across the Atlantic Ocean, flying more than 6,900 miles over France, Algeria, Mauritania, Senegal, and Brazil before arriving in Uruguay’s capital city of Montevideo at 4:30 p.m. local time (2:30 p.m. EST).

Whirlwind trip to a land the pope calls home

It is the first of 14 flights Pope Leo will take in an ambitious itinerary that will bring the 71-year-old pope to a new destination nearly every day, including a 2,200-mile flight from Buenos Aires to Lima and a military helicopter flight Nov. 14 to the Andes mountain town of Santa Cruz de Succhabamba, Peru.

The pope is making the trip just 24 days after undergoing a lobectomy surgery for localized lung adenocarcinoma on Oct. 13 in which the cancerous lower lobe of the pope’s right lung was removed. Pope Leo’s doctors confirmed the following week that the pope did not require further oncological treatment after surgery. 

Vatican officials said that no changes were made to the pope’s schedule in South America to account for his recent hospitalization. 

“He is clinically fit to undertake this trip,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told journalists on Nov. 3.

His doctors “are very confident and he’ll have plenty of medical care on board should something happen. But we don’t see that in his prognosis,” Maria Montserrat Alvarado, the prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, added.

Uruguay, Argentina and Peru en route the apostolic trip

Pope Leo will start his journey in Uruguay — the most secularized country in Latin America. It will be the first papal visit there since St. John Paul II’s in 1988. Pope Leo will visit Montevideo, the capital and largest city; Paysandú, a cultural and economic hub on the border with Argentina; and Florida, home to the National Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Thirty-Three on the Nov. 8 date of the annual national pilgrimage to the Marian shrine. 

In Argentina, where he arrives on the afternoon of Nov. 8, he will meet a challenge of stepping into the land of his predecessor Pope Francis, the Argentine pontiff who never visited his homeland as pope, and a country that Archbishop Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva of Buenos Aires recently described as “a wounded Argentina, a divided Argentina.” St. John Paul II made the last papal visit to Argentina in 1987, nearly four decades ago.

Pope Leo will visit Buenos Aires; Córdoba, the country’s second-largest city; and Luján, where he will celebrate Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Luján, Argentina’s patroness and one of its leading pilgrimage sites.

The trip culminates with Pope Leo’s homecoming to Peru, where he first arrived as an Augustinian missionary priest in 1985, including a two-day stay in Chiclayo, where Pope Leo served as bishop from 2015 to 2023.

In Peru, where he holds citizenship , the pope will also visit Lima, the capital and largest city; Chiclayo; Cusco, the former Inca capital in the Andes; and Pucallpa, a city on the Ucayali River in the Amazon rainforest that has long been a center of Catholic missionary outreach.

During the 12-day trip, Pope Leo will celebrate nine public Masses, visit seven cathedrals and preside over two stadium prayer vigils before returning to Rome on the morning of Nov. 17.

Pope Leo asked for prayers for the fruitfulness of his apostolic journey in his Nov. 4 general audience ahead of the papal trip.

“I entrust myself to your prayers, that this trip may strengthen faith, renew hope, rekindle the fire of charity, and serve as an impetus to continue proclaiming the Gospel with joy,” Pope Leo said.

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Courtney Mares is Vatican editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @catholicourtney.

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