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PRAYER INTENTIONS OF THE POPE 2017
Clarifications
Since 1879 the Pope has entrusted to the Apostleship of Prayer - today his Worldwide
Prayer Network - his universal intention. In 1928 he added a missionary intention, known
today as "for evangelization". For nearly a century millions of Catholics around the world,
united to the Heart of Jesus, have prayed every month for two prayer intentions of the
Holy Father. And they not only prayed, but offered their daily lives for these intentions.
Since the eighteenth century, the time of the missions, the world has changed. The
structures and means that were used and with which the Apostleship of Prayer developed
–-necessary for the geographic distances and for the time required for printing bulletins
and magazines—have evolved. Now, in our digital world without frontiers, with the
immediacy of social networks and with the Pope's proximity to all the media, new paths
are necessary, even as we continue with our traditional and always fruitful print media.
As we recall, with the Jubilee of Mercy, Pope Francis invited us to pray for "the intentions
he carries in his heart for the good of the Church and of the whole world" (1). To this end,
he supported from the beginning two projects of his Prayer Network: Click To Pray and
The Pope Video.
Click To Pray is now the Pope’s official platform of prayer for the great challenges of
humanity and the mission of the Church. It has more than 310,000 users, in Portuguese,
Spanish, French and English language. In 2017 there will also be a version in German,
Italian and Chinese.
The Pope Video received 7 prizes, the latest being the Bravo prize of the Spanish Episcopal
Conference. It is published in 10 languages: Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian,
Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, German, Dutch and Hebrew. It is diffused through the
Vatican’s social networks, those that are proper to our service with The Pope Video
(YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp) and those of the Secretary of Communication
(News.va, Vatican Radio and its YouTube channel, The Pope App, etc.). More than 13
million people watch it in our Vatican network. During the Jubilee of Mercy, The Pope
Video allowed Pope Francis to ask for prayer and action every month for his universal
intention. This will change because in 2017 the prayer intentions will alternate: one
month will be universal and the next month will be for evangelization.
Although the prayer intentions always concern the situation of the world and of the
Church, they often seem too general and not sufficiently related to the present concerns
of the Holy Father. This is because these intentions are prepared almost two years in
advance: it is a long process of prayerful discernment and selection, where hundreds of
proposals from the entire world are received, as well as from the various Vatican
dicasteries and congregations . The International Director of the Pope's Worldwide Prayer
Network gives these suggestions to Pope Francis a year or more in advance and later the
Pope send the official version. In this long process it is necessary to translate the
intentions into the main languages, then to send them to the national directors of the
network and to the bishops of the whole world, to publish them in various brochures and
magazines, and to publicize them to all Catholic media, etc. In order for the Pope's prayer
to be more current and closer his present concerns, in addition to the monthly
intention, the Holy Father will propose at the beginning of the month another prayer
intention that is more concrete, precise, current—an intention related to actual
circumstances.
This year 2017 we have several changes. Beginning this month of January 2017, Pope
Francis is entrusting us with one prayer intention for the whole month. The prayer
intentions will alternate: one month will be universal and the next month will be for
evangelization. In addition to the monthly prayer intention, which expresses challenges
of humanity and of the mission of the Church that concern the Holy Father and for which
he invites us to mobilize by prayer and action, he will propose at the beginning of the
month (1st Angelus) a prayer intention for his immediate concerns, a "last minute"
intention to get us out of the “globalization of indifference”.
Frédéric Fornos SJ
International Director
(1) Letter to Monsignor Rino Fisichella with which an indulgence is granted on the
occasion of the extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy
The complete article is published in the MESSENGER - magazine of the Pope’s Worldwide
Prayer Network in Spain.