We should “not be afraid” of “holiness found in our next-door neighbours”. This is the imperative contained in Pope Francis’ third Apostolic Exhortation “Gaudete et Exsultate”, released today, following Evangelii Gaudium and Amoris Laetitia. “A Christian cannot think of his or her mission on earth without seeing it as a path of holiness”, Pope Francis wrote, explaining that the saints are not just “those already beatified and canonized”, but God’s “people”, that is, each of us, who are called to live holiness as a journey made of “small” daily gestures. “Holiness is the most attractive face of the Church”, Pope Francis said, who, following in the footsteps of John Paul II, recalled that “even outside the Catholic Church and in very different contexts, the Holy Spirit raises up ‘signs of his presence’” as demonstrated by the witness of martyrs, which “has become a common inheritance of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants”. “I like to contemplate the holiness present in the patience of God’s people”, the Pope wrote: “In those parents who raise their children with immense love, in those men and women who work hard to support their families, in the sick, in elderly religious who never lose their smile. In their daily perseverance I see the holiness of the Church militant”. This is the “holiness found in our next-door neighbours”, the Pope remarked, while also praising the “genius” of women that “is seen in feminine styles of holiness, which are an essential means of reflecting God’s holiness in this world”. Pope Francis also mentioned Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Bridget, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux to emphasize that even “in times when women tended to be most ignored or overlooked, the Holy Spirit raised up saints whose attractiveness produced new spiritual vigour and important reforms in the Church”. But the history of the Church, the Pope pointed out, is also made by many “unknown or forgotten women who, each in her own way, sustained and transformed families and communities by the power of their witness”.