Pray with the Pope

The Pray With The Pope project was launched during this year's (2013) World Youth Day, as an initiative of DeSales Media Corporation of the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York.

“Our goal at PWP is to connect Catholics worldwide, by organizing them in a perpetual, global chain of unbroken prayer with Pope Francis and for his prayer intentions.”

I was not fortunate enough to receive nor even see one of the medallions – which have Pope Francis' joyful face on one side, and a special unique code on the reverse – distributed during World Youth Day.  The code is entered on the www.praywiththepope.org site for tracking those joining in the Pope’s prayer intentions.

Their hope is to have the medallions spread throughout the world, creating a global prayer brigade.  The interesting thing about the medallions, according to the website, is they are not meant to be collected but shared.  After you log in the code on your electronic devices, and spend about a week with it in your possession, you are then encouraged to give it away.

The new owner would follow the same steps: log on the website using the same code from their location, pray with it for about a week and repeat the “bless it forward” pattern.  Even after you passed on the medallion, you are still able and encouraged to continue to log in with original code and select prayer times – the site can track several users of one code at a time.

Pledged prayer partners join into perpetual (or what they hope will become perpetual) prayer with the Pope for his intentions.  The site features instructions and information in six different languages.  The pledged prayer times are in five minute increments. You can sign up for the next available time, or schedule a convenient future time(s) to pray as well.

If you were not lucky enough to acquire one at World Youth Day – then the medallions can be purchased online for $9 each.  They are so adorable that I have to be honest, it will be hard to follow the “SHARE” rules – BUT that's really a necessary element to make the pray and share plan of spreading the word effective.

Catholic Techtalk.com did a great interview with Monsignor Kieran Harrington, vicar for communications at the Brooklyn Diocese, so be sure to read that.

Q: The Diocese of Brooklyn’s first-ever large-scale technology project was recently launched at the World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro. Can you explain what the goal of the Pray with the Pope project is?

A: The goal of Pray with the Pope is to achieve a perpetual, unbroken chain of prayer across cultures and nations. Visitors to the site schedule a specific time to pray with the Holy Father and for his monthly prayer intentions. And, because [they] can observe others’ prayer times and see them taking place in real-time, it’s also a way to connect Catholics across the world, united in this single purpose.

What I loved most about WYD was feeling a part of something so much larger than myself, my parish church, and even my diocese. This project is a fantastic way to not only continue that for the WYD pilgrims but also offer those who were not able to attend that same amazing feeling of being a part of that same larger Catholic community.

Read more of our Tech Talk columns.

Copyright 2013 Allison Gingras