The suffering Holy Father gathers us around Mary when we're helpless, cardinal says

Since Feb. 24, the faithful, led by cardinals and bishops, have prayed the daily rosary in St. Peter’s Square for Pope Francis’ recovery. “It is the pope who gathers us here,” Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, one of the papal right-hand men, told OSV News.

“In this situation, we’re helpless, so prayer is the only solace,” he said, adding that it only seems like it’s business as usual at the Vatican, “but it’s not, because it feels very empty, without a spirit.”

The Polish prelate, who heads the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Service of Charity, is the pope’s point man for distributing alms to the poor and needy — those that Francis put at the center of his papacy. Cardinal Krajewski led the rosary March 2.

A clergy member kisses a rosary ahead of a prayer service in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Feb. 25, 2025, as Pope Francis continued his treatment at Gemelli Hospital. (OSV News photo/Yara Nardi, Reuters)

He said people rush to pray every night at St. Peter’s Square — “the heart of Rome, where everything is accomplished” — because “this is where martyrdom takes place. St. Peter’s Square is the cemetery of Christians. But this is also where every election of a pope is announced. So when the pope suffers, it’s so very natural that we rush to this very square, where people rushed when John Paul II passed away, when Pope Benedict passed away. So it’s the natural thing, it’s the pope himself that gathers us here.”

Every night for over a week now, thousands of Catholics pray the rosary for Pope Francis’ recovery “to look up to the Blessed Mother,” the cardinal said.

“The Mother of God stood at the foot of the cross. She participated in the suffering of her son. She was helpless. And we too at the suffering of another person, of the Holy Father, are helpless, because we can do nothing. We can send him well wishes, but the only thing we can really do in terms of action — is to simply come together,” Cardinal Krajewski told OSV News.

Recalling the Gospel of Matthew passage “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” the cardinal said that Catholics, worried about the Holy Father, feel the presence of God during the rosaries.

“We cannot afford to do anything else, there are no sermons, no speeches, no greetings during those nightly prayers,” the pope’s almoner said. “Like Mary, we stand under the cross of suffering, because it is the cross of suffering in which the Holy Father participates.”

In the rosary “we repeat the angel’s greeting, and interestingly enough — when we pray Hail Mary — we pray for ourselves, for us sinners, now and when it will be most difficult, in the hour of death,” Cardinal Krajewski said.

Stressing that the rosary is “the best prayer for this time,” the cardinal told OSV News: “I’ll honestly admit that as I’m in this square, I’m reminded of how much good has been done over these 12 years by Pope Francis. During this prayer, Lord Jesus reminds us of that — and we would like this pontificate to continue.

“But before each decade of the rosary, there is also the Our Father prayer, and it has such an amazing overtone — ‘Thy will’ — not mine. That is, we give ourselves completely to the Lord Jesus. Let it be as God wills.”