Ī month earlier, Pope Francis called more generically to "a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting" in view of scandals concerning Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. He asked them "to pray that the Holy Mother of God place the Church beneath her protective mantle: to preserve her from the attacks by the devil, the great accuser, and at the same time to make her more aware of the faults, the errors and the abuses committed in the present and in the past, and committed to combating without any hesitation, so that evil may not prevail". On 29 September 2018, Pope Francis asked Catholics everywhere to pray the Rosary each day during the following month of October and to conclude it with the ancient prayer " Sub tuum praesidium" and the Leonine prayer to Saint Michael.
Pope John Paul II, Regina Caeli, 24 April 1994 Amen."Īlthough this prayer is no longer recited at the end of Mass, I ask everyone not to forget it and to recite it to obtain help in the battle against the forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil May God rebuke him, we humbly pray And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. "Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Pope Leo XIII certainly had this picture in mind when, at the end of the last century, he brought in, throughout the Church, a special prayer to St Michael: The Book of Revelation refers to this same battle, recalling before our eyes the image of St Michael the Archangel (cf. May prayer strengthen us for the spiritual battle that the Letter to the Ephesians speaks of: "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might" ( Ephesians 6:10). Thirty years later, Pope John Paul II recommended its use, saying:
Removing the obligation to recite this prayer (along with the three Hail Marys, the Hail Holy Queen, and the prayer for the Church) after Low Mass did not mean forbidding its use either privately or publicly in other circumstances.
The practice of reciting this and the other Leonine prayers after Mass was officially suppressed by the 26 September 1964 Instruction Inter oecumenici which came into effect on 7 March 1965. The Pope's status as a temporal leader was restored in 1929 by the creation of the State of Vatican City, and in the following year, Pope Pius XI ordered that the intention for which these prayers should from then on be offered was "to permit tranquility and freedom to profess the faith to be restored to the afflicted people of Russia". The prayer to St Michael described above was added to the Leonine Prayers in 1886. God's help was sought for a satisfactory solution to the loss of the Pope's temporal sovereignty, which deprived him of the independence felt to be required for effective use of his spiritual authority. The ' Leonine Prayers' originated in 1884, when Pope Leo XIII ordered certain prayers to be said after Low Mass, in defense of the independence of the Holy See.