Pope's Wolrldwide Prayer Network
The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network (Apostleship of Prayer) addresses the challenges facing humanity and assists the mission of the Church. We pray and work to meet the challenges of the world identified by the Pope in his monthly intentions, while walking a spiritual path called the “Way of the Heart.”
 

WHAT IS THE POPE’S WORLDWIDE PRAYER NETWORK?

Learn more about our renewal process by exploring our renewal documents on our international website.

IDENTITY

The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network (Apostleship of Prayer) addresses the challenges facing humanity and assists the mission of the Church.

VISION

To pray and work to meet the challenges of the world identified by the Pope. His intentions are keys for our prayers and mission.

MISSION

You are apostles in daily life, walking a spiritual path called “Way of the Heart,” working to serve Christ’s mission.

The Story Behind the Pope's Worldwide Paryer Network 

OUR STORY

Our story begins on December 3, 1844, on the feast of St. Francis Xavier, at the novitiate for Jesuit students in Vals-près-le-Puy (central region of France). Their spiritual father, Father Gautrelet, SJ, held a meeting with the students to express dissatisfaction with an attitude developing among them. The problem was that they were more motivated by the idea of setting off for faraway missions in India than by having to learn theology.

He urged them to concentrate more on their studies. But, when he was commenting on St. Francis Xavier’s missionary adventure in the homily for that feast-day’s Mass, he unintentionally aroused the young students’ enthusiasm by describing how a life entirely given to study could be very effective in the apostolate: “If each one infuses his labours with the spirit of prayer and makes of them an offering; if several jointly direct themselves in the same way, there would be a convergence of power capable of lifting up mountains!” “Be missionaries already through your prayer, by the offering of your daily life. Your mission is here and now, in your studies and the little things of every day. In fulfilling it through being open to the will of God, you are already apostles who are helping the entire Church. Pray for the people you will meet tomorrow,” he told them.

Father Gautrelet suggested a series of simple steps that would help them to give meaning to what they were already experiencing in the service of Christ’s mission, while further deepening in them their apostolic availability. The work of every day is the primary apostolate, thanks to the daily offering of what is being lived. This way of seeing prayer as mission, ‘the spreading of faith by prayer,’ very quickly transformed the community: the Mass, sacramental offering of Christ, became the centre of the day, and the day became an extension of the Mass.

From that moment on, what was called the “Apostleship of Prayer” spread like wildfire, first in the surrounding country villages where the young Jesuits passed on this way of praying rooted in daily life, then throughout the world. By 1849, the Apostleship of Prayer was recognized by Pope Pius IX, and in 1890, Leo XIII entrusted to it his monthly prayer intentions.

Ever since, popes have entrusted to us their intentions, which we continue to spread throughout the world today.

During the last four years, from the Vatican office of this apostolate, we have guided a worldwide effort that has transformed the Apostleship of Prayer into the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network. We have made an effort to pinpoint the spiritual axes present in the foundational insight Father F.X. Gautrelet received in 1844. The renewed Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network will strive to put Christ at the center of our lives and live with him an intimate friendship. We will be apostles invited to collaborate with him, available to his mission of compassion on behalf of our brothers and sisters.