CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy >> Pope Leo XIV called Sunday for “merciful compassion” for the world’s poor, victims of tyranny and wars, as he celebrated Mass in a parish church that has special spiritual ties to Leo’s own Augustinian religious order.

Leo is on vacation and resuming the papal tradition of summering at the papal estate of Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, and celebrated Mass at St. Thomas of Villanova.

St. Thomas of Villanova was a 16th-century Spanish teacher who was a local and regional superior of the Augustinian order, a mendicant order inspired by the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo. The saint is the patron and namesake of Leo’s alma mater outside Philadelphia, Villanova University.

— The Associated Press