Pope Francis at the Synod on Synodality’s closing Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 29, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
CNA Staff, Oct 31, 2023 / 16:00 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis’ prayer intention of the month of November is for himself — the pope.
“Pray to the Lord that he will bless me,” Pope Francis said in a video released Oct. 31. “Your prayer gives me strength and helps me to discern and to accompany the Church, listening to the Holy Spirit.”
“The fact that someone is pope doesn’t mean they lose their humanity,” he added. “On the contrary, my humanity grows each day with God’s holy and faithful people.”
The Holy Father called his role as pope “a process.”
He explained that throughout the process, a pope “learns how to be more charitable, more merciful, and, above all, more patient, like God Our Father, who is so patient.”
“I can imagine that at the beginning of their pontificate, all the popes had this feeling of trepidation, apprehension, knowing that he will be judged harshly,” he said. “For the Lord will ask us bishops to give a serious account.”
Pope Francis asked the faithful to “judge benevolently” and to “pray that the pope, whoever he might be — today it is my turn — may receive the help of the Holy Spirit, that he may be docile to that help.”
He concluded with a prayer: “Let us pray for the pope, so that in the exercise of his mission, he may continue to accompany in the faith the flock entrusted to him by Jesus, always with the help of the Holy Spirit. And pray for me! Favorably!”
Pope Francis’ prayer video is promoted by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, which raises awareness of monthly papal prayer intentions.
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Pope Leo XIV greets the faithful in St. Peter’s Basilica, May 31, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
CNA Staff, Jun 3, 2025 / 11:59 am (CNA).
In his first prayer intention video of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV has asked the faithful to pray that the world might grow in compassion during the month of June.
“Let us pray that each one of us might find consolation in a personal relationship with Jesus, and from his heart, learn to have compassion on the world,” the pope said in a video released June 3.
The video also includes an original prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to which the month of June is dedicated.
According to a press release, the international director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, Jesuit Father Cristóbal Fones, explained that Pope Leo XIV’s prayer intention focuses on growing in compassion for the world through a personal relationship with Jesus.
“By cultivating this truly close relationship, our hearts are more conformed to his. We grow in love and mercy, and we better learn what compassion is,” Fones said. “Jesus manifested an unconditional love for everyone, especially for the poor, the sick, and those who were suffering. The pope encourages us to imitate this compassionate loveby extending a hand to those in need.”
He added: “Compassion seeks to alleviate suffering and to promote human dignity. This is why it is translated into concrete actions that address the roots of poverty, inequality, and exclusion, so as to contribute to the construction of a more just and solidary world.”
Here is the full prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus:
Lord, I come to your tender heart today, to you who have words that set my heart ablaze, to you who pour out compassion on the little ones and the poor, on those who suffer, and on all human miseries.
I desire to know you more, to contemplate you in the Gospel, to be with you and learn from you and from the charity with which you allowed yourself to be touched by all forms of poverty.
You showed us the Father’s love by loving us without measure with your divine and human heart.
Grant all your children the grace of encountering you. Change, shape, and transform our plans, so that we seek only you in every circumstance: in prayer, in work, in encounters, and in our daily routine.
From this encounter, send us out on mission, a mission of compassion for the world in which you are the source from which all consolation flows.
Amen.
The video prayer intention is promoted by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, which raises awareness of monthly papal prayer intentions.
Pope Francis during the weekly general audience at St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, Sept. 7, 2022. / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Sep 7, 2022 / 04:24 am (CNA).
God can speak to us in the unexpected moments of our lives if we learn to listen well to what he is telling us in our hearts, Pope Francis said on Wednesday.
“I will give you a piece of advice: beware of the unexpected,” the pope said Sept. 7 at his weekly public audience.
“Is it life speaking to you, is it the Lord speaking to you, or is it the devil? Someone,” he continued. “But there is something to discern, how I react when faced with the unexpected.”
Francis’ general audience was again in St. Peter’s Square Wednesday after it was held inside the Vatican’s Paul VI auditorium in August to avoid the worst of the summer heat.
Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
The pope opened and closed his encounter with the public by riding the popemobile around the square. The audience marked his second week of catechesis on the theme of “Discernment.”
As part of discernment, the pope encouraged people to reflect on their reactions to even small, unexpected circumstances, such as the surprise arrival of one’s mother-in-law.
“I was quiet at home and ‘Boom!’ — my mother-in-law arrives; and how do you react to your mother-in-law? Is it love or something else inside? You must discern,” he said. “I was working well in the office, and a companion comes along to tell me he needs money: how do you react? See what happens when we experience things we were not expecting, and there we can learn to know our heart as it moves.”
Pope Francis said knowing how to really listen to your heart is an important part of discernment in making a judgment or decision about something.
“We listen to the television, the radio, the mobile phone; we are experts at listening, but I ask you: do you know how to listen to your heart?” he asked. “Do you stop to ask: ‘But how is my heart? Is it satisfied, is it sad, is it searching for something?’ To make good decisions, you need to listen to your heart.”
Pope Francis during the weekly general audience at St. Peter’s Square, Sept. 7, 2022. Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
To illustrate his point, the pope recalled the story of the conversion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier enamored with stories of knights and chivalry who was forced to confront his future happiness after he was badly injured in battle.
Bored while his leg was healing, Ignatius read stories of the saints and the life of Jesus when other books were not available to him.
Francis quoted from Ignatius’ autobiography, in which the future saint wrote about himself: “‘When he thought of worldly things’ — and of chivalrous things, one understands — ‘it gave him great pleasure, but afterward he found himself dry and sad. But when he thought of journeying to Jerusalem, and of living only on herbs and practicing austerities, he found pleasure not only while thinking of them, but also when he had ceased.’”
“In this experience we note two aspects, above all,” the pope said. “The first is time: that is, the thoughts of the world are attractive at the beginning, but then they lose their luster and leave emptiness and discontent; they leave you that way, empty. Thoughts of God, on the contrary, rouse first a certain resistance — ‘But I’m not going to read this boring thing about saints’ — but when they are welcomed, they bring an unknown peace that lasts for a long time.”
He emphasized that “discernment is not a sort of oracle or fatalism, or something from a laboratory, like casting one’s lot on two possibilities.”
Francis also said that some of life’s big questions often arise after “we have already traveled a stretch of the road in life.”
Sometimes, we can get stuck on one idea and end up disappointed, he pointed out, adding that doing something good, such as a work of charity, can get us out of that rut by bringing us joy and happiness, feelings which can lead to thoughts of God.
The pope also shared a piece of wisdom from Saint Ignatius: to read the lives of the saints.
“Because they show the style of God in the life of people not very different to us, because the saints were made of flesh and blood like us, in a narrative, comprehensible way. Their actions speak to ours, and they help us to understand their meaning,” he said.
Sometimes, he added, “there is an apparent randomness in the events of life: everything seems to arise from a banal mishap — there were no books about knights, only lives of saints. A mishap that nonetheless holds a possible turning point.”
“God works through unplannable events, and also through mishaps,” he said. “Mishap: What is God saying to you? What is life telling you there?”
At the end of his general audience, Pope Francis expressed his closeness to all mothers, and “in a special way, to those mothers who have children who suffer: those who are sick, those who are marginalized, those who are imprisoned.”
“A special prayer goes to the mothers of young detainees: let hope never be lacking. Unfortunately, in prisons there are many people who take their own life, at times also young people. A mother’s love can save them from this danger. May Our Lady console all mothers distressed by the suffering of their children,” he said.
Vatican City, Jul 16, 2019 / 08:27 am (CNA).- That the working document for October’s Synod of Bishops calls the Amazon region a source of revelation is a “false teaching,” Cardinal Gerhard Mueller said Tuesday.
His Holiness Pope Francis is a world leader blessed with a dynamic spirituality. People of good will in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania keep praying for the wellbeing and good health of the Supreme Pontiff.
His Holiness Pope Francis is a world leader blessed with a dynamic spirituality. People of good will in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania keep praying for the wellbeing and good health of the Supreme Pontiff.