Thomas Griffin 3/1/25
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Let Us Begin: New Book on the Life and Power of St. Francis
Pope Francis has been in the hospital since February 14th. During this time, there have been countless news reports about the apparent progress and proposed deterioration of his recovery. Both religious and secular institutions have weighed in on the pope’s condition as well as began to speculate about who will be the next pope. In the midst of all of these opinions, so many people have urged the world to pray for the pope.
This should evoke two intentional questions in our minds and in our hearts. First, why do we pray for people when they are sick? Second, why should we pray so fervently for the pope?
We do not pray for those who are sick because we are hoping for a magic trick that makes them better. We also do not pray for those who are ill because God does not know about their condition or because our words can change God’s mind on helping them. Intercessory prayer, or prayer of petition, is not about getting what we want. Praying for others, especially those who are suffering, is connected to what the crux of prayer actually is: it is all about relationship and intimacy.
The more we think about someone, the more we grow in love and care for them. If that is true about our thoughts, then it is even more true about our prayer. When we ask God to be with someone who is sick or to protect someone who is in trouble, we are not telling Him to do something that He is already not doing. However, this type of prayer breeds dependence on God and allows our trust in Him to grow. It also brings us closer to the one we pray for.
Ultimately, no matter what happens to someone that we pray for, God always has the victory. Our prayers for the Holy Father truly help him, and they truly help us. While none of us can physically see the pope or exactly understand what is happening with his condition, our prayer unites us to him in a unique way, and it truly aids him in being strengthened.
The impact of praying for someone cannot be measured through modern analytics and will never show up in the data of a survey or a scientific experiment. Intercessory prayer is built on a true trust in the goodness of God. It also relies on the fact that since Jesus suffered on the cross and defeated the powers of evil on Easter Sunday, he knows what it is like to experience pain. He also desires to communicate to us that there is no suffering that he cannot conquer.
So, we pray for those who are sick – we pray for the Holy Father who is hospitalized – because we are storming heaven on his behalf. Through our conversations with God about Pope Francis we are more intimately united to God because He cares about everything we care about and we are more intimately united to the pope. When Francis prays and we pray – God brings us together.
This brings us to our second question. Why is it so important to pray, specifically for the pope? This could sound like an odd question because the answer is seemingly obvious. The pope is the leader of the Catholic world and he is the shepherd of God’s people. The pope stands as the visible Peter of today. This office communicates that what Jesus started with the apostles continues today. Jesus has kept his promise to remain with us always and to guide his church through the successors of the apostles.
All of these words convey proper theology concerning the authority of the church. However, there is another important reason why we should pray fervently for Pope Francis. We should pray for him, even when he is not sick, because he is our spiritual father. This is true of every pope.
A challenging part of this fact for modern men and women rests on the fact that many people have struggled to agree with the pope on some of his words and actions. Some of the faithful deeply struggle with his off the cuff remarks because they are often ambiguous. Some struggle with his challenge for the church to be poor and to be concerned about the outcasts and the immigrant.
Here, I’m not talking about the extremists who question the validity of his papacy. I’m referencing those who love the church and the Holy Father but disagree with how he speaks or goes about his agenda. Like all fathers, myself included, no man is perfect. The pope would admit that himself.
We should fervently pray for him because Jesus desires for us to have him as our spiritual father. Not just you and me individually, but the entire church collectively. We share in the fact that he is our shepherd. No matter what our opinions are of him, there is always value in showing love to the pope because there’s always something that the pope can teach us.
One day, only God knows when, the pope will no longer be with us. Another will be elected under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We will have another spiritual father to lead the church and our call to pray for him daily will remain. For now, our pope appears to be pretty sick. So let us pray for him, that he may know just how close Christ is to him and so that we may know that the powers of death have been defeated for all of us. That is what all prayer, union with God, is meant to remind us.
Thomas Griffin is the chairperson of the religion department at a Catholic high school on Long Island where he lives with his wife and two sons. He has a masters degree in theology and is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Empty Tomb Project: The Magazine. He is the author of Let Us Begin: Saint Francis’s Way of Becoming Like Christ and Renewing the World.
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