At the Angelus address on December 14, 2025, Pope Leo XIV paid tribute to new martyrs of the Catholic Church whose beatifications took place the previous day in Paris and Jaén, Spain, recognizing their witness to Christ amid persecution during the Nazi occupation of France and the Spanish Civil War.
In Paris, Notre-Dame Cathedral hosted the largest collective beatification ever held in France, where 50 French Catholics — including priests, religious, seminarians, and laypeople — were raised to the altars. They were killed “in hatred of the faith” in 1944–45 after offering spiritual support to young French men conscripted into the Compulsory Work Service (Service du Travail Ibligatoire, STO) under the Nazi regime.
These men, mostly in their 20s and 30s, responded to a need for pastoral care among those forced into Germany for wartime labor and faced arrest and execution for their clandestine ministry. Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, who presided over the Paris Mass, highlighted that these new blesseds bore “a testimony of love” rooted in their steadfast service.
Pope Leo XIV described them as “courageous witnesses to the Gospel,” persecuted and killed for remaining close to their people and faithful to the Church amid one of Europe’s darkest conflicts.
At the same time in Jaén, Spain, 124 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War — 109 priests, 14 laypeople, and one Poor Clare nun — were also beatified for giving their lives out of fidelity to Christ during the intense anti-religious persecution of 1936–38.
The ceremony in the Cathedral of the Assumption was presided over by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, and took place where many of the martyrs spent their final days before being executed.
With the addition of these 124 new blesseds, the total number of 20th-century martyrs recognized by the Catholic Church in Spain rises to 2,254, with 11 already canonized, underscoring the profound cost of faith witnessed by Spanish Catholics during the civil war.
Bishop Sebastián Chico of Jaén said in a pastoral letter that their blood, “far from being sterile, has become a fertile seed,” nourishing the faith of current parishes, families, and communities, and calling the faithful to deeper discipleship and hope.
By remembering both French and Spanish martyrs, Pope Leo XIV emphasized how their sacrifices — though from different historical moments — share a single testament: violence and hatred do not have the final word, and the faithful witness of Christ remains a living challenge to the Church and the world today.
