Querido Francisco,
Thank you for being here with us on the Apostleship of Prayer’s 175 years celebration. Thank you for all your support and encouragement along these years, as we went on to re-found this service of the Holy See, today the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.
Present here are 52 National Delegations from all continents, along with our youth branch, the Eucharistic Youth Movement. Those that are part of this network, a network mainly parish based, are usually “invisible.” People who do not show up on the media, but are there to push ahead the mission of the Church through their deep faith, generosity, their daily life offering.
They are invisible because prayer, especially prayer of intercession for the world and for others, seems many times useless, a waste of time. However, all of us here this morning, together with all those invisible others, are like the friends of the crippled man of the Gospel.
This man asked for nothing –his friends lead him to Jesus. They knew of his sufferings and they knew of God’s mercy shown in Jesus’ Heart. They went ahead in spite of the difficulties. In this same way, we in the Pope’s Prayer Network, bring to Jesus people who suffer and feel neglected. We also bring to the Heart of Jesus the challenges of the world and the Church. The prayer intentions you entrust us every month are for us a compass that guides us to open our hearts to others in a mission of compassion for the world.
For this, after having launched the Pope’s video, and Click to Pray, especially for the youth, today we launch a new project: The Way of the Heart. It intends to consolidate our re-foundation process and help us deepen the spiritual dynamics of the Heart of Jesus, under the orientation of EvangeliI Gaudium.
Now you will hear some testimonies from different countries on what we have been living in this process. Thank you for helping us become men and women of prayer for the world and for the mission of the Church.
Frédéric Fornos, SJ
International Director Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network