VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Prayer has the power to transform today’s Catholics into modern-day apostles who can respond to what the world truly needs, said the new acting international director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.
“Prayer is not just reciting words,” Jesuit Father Cristobal Fones told Catholic News Service at a Vatican press event Dec. 5.
When done right, prayer creates an intimate connection with that Lord, he said, “and that transforms us. I think the more we pray in that sense, the more we get closer as collaborators, as apostles, in Christ’s mission of compassion” in today’s world.
Pope Francis named Father Fones to be the new international director of the worldwide network starting in January, taking over from Jesuit Father Frédéric Fornos, whom the pope appointed in 2016.
The prayer network, formerly called the Apostleship of Prayer, is a Jesuit-run outreach that has given Catholics the pope’s monthly prayer intentions since 1890. The global prayer network started offering the prayer intentions on video over social media in 2016. Today, thepopevideo.org releases a new video every month in 22 languages.
The international network is present online at popesprayer.va and in 92 countries; it is made up of more than 22 million Catholics. It includes a youth branch, the Eucharistic Youth Movement, which is an international movement for the Christian formation of children and young people from 5 to 25 years old.
The network coordinates a number of projects, in addition to “The Pope Video,” including:
— The website clicktopray.org and a mobile app in seven languages to connect to hundreds of thousands of others to pray “with the pope” using his monthly prayer intentions; to pray every day by receiving notifications and inspirational thoughts for prayer or reflection; and to “pray with the network” where users, including Pope Francis, can share their prayers with others.
— The Click to Pray eRosary app, which teaches people how to pray the rosary, contemplate the Gospel and pray for peace with a traditional rosary or with an interactive rosary bracelet that connects to a smartphone using Bluetooth.
— The Way of the Heart, a formation program and spiritual itinerary of videos, audio files, books, texts and images, to help Catholics “enter into a mission of compassion for the world” by tuning into the heart of Jesus to become more available for mission and for mobilizing to meet the challenges facing humanity and the mission of the church.
Father Fones said one of the challenges he wants to tackle is to spread the word about the pope’s prayer intentions and “to help people to actually pray for (the intentions) and to get involved” in concretely addressing them.
While prayer is powerful, he said, the network’s mission is also to help Catholics become mobilized around the different themes the prayer intentions highlight, such as education for migrants and rights for women.
“They require action from our part,” he said.
The intentions also help Catholics pray for more than just people and concerns in their own personal lives, he said. They expand hearts by opening up a person’s prayers “for other people that perhaps we don’t know but they need our prayer and our commitment.”
Father Fones said he also wants to spread the Way of the Heart program, “which is built up under the light of the spiritual exercises in nine steps. It’s very well done. It’s a very organized and practical way to approach this different way of praying.”
“Because for many people, prayer is just saying things, but for us it is transforming ourselves into real apostles today for the needs of the world as Jesus wants us to be,” he said.
At the Vatican event, Father Fones also introduced the rest of the new executive team, which includes Bettina Raed, international vice director since September, and Jesuit Father Miguel Pedro Melo, who will join her as co-international vice director starting in July 2025.
Pope Francis established the network as a pontifical work in 2018 to emphasize the universal character of its mission and to mobilize Catholics through prayer and action. He then made it a pontifical foundation in 2020 and formally entrusted it to the Society of Jesus.
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