The Holy See Press Office's presentation of the Pope’s new prayer app, Click To Pray 2.0, and the prayer website for the Synod, took place.
FREE Download: https://www.clicktopray.org/
The following are the interventions given by the speakers:
Fr. Frédéric Fornos, S.J.
Prayer at the centre of the synodal process
“Click To Pray” has changed my life of prayer”, says Liliana. “Having friends in Brazil, in the United States, Italy, and Spain, reading on Click To Pray that someone is asking to pray, or to pray in their own language, to be able to share with them and to pray for this intention alongside them, creates bonds”. How many people testify on Click To Pray of the fruitfulness of pray in their life, the support they receive through the prayer of so many others! Prayer of intercession creates solidarity and communion in diversity.
As the Pope said to us on the 175th anniversary of the Apostleship of Prayer, now a Pontifical Foundation, the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, “the heart of the Church’s mission is prayer”. It is prayer, the personal encounter with the Lord, in the light of the Gospel, that transforms our life and that of our communities. Praying for each other is not a waste of time, just as it is not a waste of time to stay in silence beside someone we love or who is ill. Prayer is like the seed in the darkness of the earth, which in time will bear fruit. Remember, as Francis tells us, that “the attitude of intercession is proper to the saints” (17.6.20). There are very good apps that help us to pray for each other, and with the Word of God. Click To Pray, in seven languages, participates in this prayer community, also with the Pope’s prayer profile opened by Francis in 2019, inviting young people to download the app to pray for the mission of the Church.
Since 2016 Click To Pray has been the Pope's prayer platform, to help pray for the challenges of humanity and the mission of the Church as expressed in Francis’ prayer intentions. The Pope's prayer intentions are part of the Holy Father’s prayer and discernment, and are an invitation in the Synodal journey, which we have begun, to discern and recognise how the Spirit of the Lord is calling us to live out these challenges of humanity and the mission of the Church. Click To Pray will support the spiritual process of the Synod of the Church with other proposals, such as praying for the local Church with the prayer intentions of the Bishops’ Conferences that wish to do so.
Today, together with the General Secretariat of the Synod and the International Union of Superiors General, the Pope's World Prayer Network is presenting a website to pray for a synodal Church, where all God's people can share their prayers. As Cardinal Mario Grech said in his second letter to brothers and sisters called to monastic and contemplative life: “There is no discernment without individual prayer and with other brothers and sisters. Synodality requires a personal and communal conversion that flows from and is sustained by prayer. Your prayer, which flows from silence and contemplation, can be of great help to all the Church”.
Intervention of Msgr. Lucio Ruiz
Among the great challenges of the digital era, we have had to live through the Covid-19 pandemic and, since “even worse than this crisis is the tragedy of squandering it”, we must treasure what we have been able to, and what we have had to learn. One of these realities is that of incorporating, as a Church, what digital culture has to offer in order to reach and to accompany people today, where they are, reaching out to the existential peripheries.
The Statio Orbis of 27 March 2020 and the Masses at Santa Marta during the pandemic, among the many realities of the universal Church, showed to us the extent to which, without focusing on the media and on technology, we succeeded in being united, in praying together, and in living the life of the Church intensely; because when love is great, all means are good for living and manifesting communion.
Click To Pray (as an app, website, and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube) is a good and opportune tool for this communion, because it offers a space for community and support in and for prayer.
The novelty of the new platforms proposes greater interaction with various ecclesial networks and communities, and new possibilities for accompanying us in a personalized way in our spiritual life.
We must also underline the importance of the Pope’s social networks for reaching the heart of the people, wherever they are, to accompany them on their journey. Twitter (just think, the tweet storm of Pontifex inspired by the Pope’s Message to Popular Movements reached 50 million users) and Instagram (which has around 8 million followers) unite with the Pope’s prayer profile on Click To Pray, an initiative realized in collaboration with the Dicastery for Communication.
It is a great joy to be able to present today not only the new version of Click To Pray, but also its dynamic openness to the process that the Church has begun with the Synod.
Intervention of Dr. Bettina Raed
Click To Pray 2.0 at the service of a synodal Church
Click To Pray helps to pray for a synodal Church. Since 2016, Click To Pray has accompanied users in their personal and community prayer by proposing a daily rhythm of prayer in three moments of the day, morning, afternoon and evening. The proposals are simple, concrete and well adapted to daily life, so that in the midst of their everyday activities, people can pray for the needs of the world. These needs of men and women who suffer are the mission of the Church and the Holy Father expresses them in his prayer intentions. To pray for the Holy Father’s intentions does not only mean to pray for his monthly intentions, but for all the requests for which the Holy Father asks us to pray, and which are present in his prayer profile.
What is new in this new version?
The school of prayer and the prayer diary. Why are they new? The agenda allows the user to organise the content he wants to pray with and also the times, according to his sensitivity and desire; in this way he can personalise his way of praying. Another novelty is that Click To Pray offers a school of prayer with content that helps to form and deepen prayer; and much of it comes from the experience of Pope Francis’ catechesis and the Church’s spiritual treasure. As well as other content that comes from global projects, such as Vatican Media's Word of the Day and Tweeting with God.
Click To Pray helps pray for the synod process by linking to content from the Synod prayer site. This content, which will be highlighted, will initially include the prayers of local monasteries and churches and later those of all God’s people.
And finally, Click To Pray maintains its section of the prayer wall, entitled community in this version, where people can share their prayers and pray for each other. It is the most important place for many people, where they feel accompanied in their difficulties and personal situations; and in this sense we have many testimonies from people who tell us how Click To Pray helps them in their lives. It is a real experience of networking and community of people praying together.
Click To Pray is a prayer community that helps pray for the challenges of the world.
Intervention of Mr. Juan Ignacio Castellaro
Click To Pray 2.0: renewal and technological development
Click To Pray 2.0 is a platform specially designed to offer each person an experience of profound prayer through each of the contents and proposals. The new navigation of the website is dynamic and visually appealing. When entering the site, different and updated content is offered for daily prayer.
The new graphic design highlights the Holy Father’s prayer, placing his intentions and special prayer requests at the centre and heart of the proposal. The user can access each of these main contents in a simple and intuitive way.
The app for mobile devices, in its beta version and still under development, will offer a new function: the daily prayer agenda. Each person will be able to set the times, receive reminders and choose the contents and proposals for their prayer. This personalisation further enhances the value of the School of Prayer, as each user will be able to choose, from all the contents, those that will help them most to encounter the Lord.
In this sense, the School of Prayer is an open service available to Dicasteries and other partners seeking to promote initiatives and prayer campaigns for the challenges facing humanity and the mission of the Church.
The technological development follows the highest quality and security standards recommended for this type of platform. It is ready to receive thousands of users and allow a friendly and easy experience within the virtual environment.
Along the way, Click To Pray has reached more than 2.5 million people on all continents and is available in 7 languages. Every year, more than 400,000 users pray with Pope Francis for his prayer intentions.
It is a tool that reaches all generations.
This update is especially designed from listening to many testimonies: young people, adults, men and women who use Click To Pray to enter into a rhythm of daily prayer and with different content every day.
We hope that this renewal will be a good opportunity to offer a quality service and help the whole Church to walk together and pray for each other.
Intervention of Dr. Patrizia Morgante
As the International Union of Superiors General we are very happy to collaborate, in a synodal style, in this joint project with the General Secretariat of the Synod and the World Network of Prayer of the Pope.
We dreamt up and created this website, prayforthesynod.va, as a virtual contemplative space where every believer can share his or her prayer for a synodal Church.
We wish to accompany the entire synodal path with a prayerful attitude and profound listening, an indispensable premise for the community discernment to which Pope Francis invites the whole Church.
In prayer, the Christian expresses his dream and desire for a synodal Church. The possibility of having a virtual community where we can collect our prayers nourishes the communion and participation of everyone.
Those who enter the site, thanks to the inviting graphics, will be able to find a space where they can pause and stop, praying with their own prayer and welcoming those of the other members of the universal community. These selected prayers can easily be integrated into the various websites with a widget (Flux RSS).
From now until 31 October, we will publish only the prayers that come to us from the Monasteries of the world, responding to Cardinal Grech’s second letter.
Cardinal Mario Grech invites them to be instruments in the hands of the Spirit to guide the universal ecclesial community to pray for the synodal Church.
As of 1 November, the entire worldwide ecclesial community is invited to send the prayers in the different languages for publication.
To facilitate prayer and reach more people, selected prayers from the prayer webpage for the Synod will be available on the Pope’s Click To Pray App (Android and iOS).
Finally, some of these selected prayers will be shared on the Click To Pray and UISG social networks in 5 languages, so as to reach even more people in this synodal journey.
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The speakers at the meeting with journalists were Fr. Frédéric Fornos, S.J., international director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network; Msgr. Lucio Ruiz, secretary of the Holy See Dicastery for Communication; Dr. Bettina Raed, international coordinator of Click To Pray, and regional director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network in Argentina and Uruguay; Mr. Juan Ignacio Castellaro, project manager of Click To Pray, and Dr. Patrizia Morgante, head of Communication of the Union of Superiors General (UISG).
His Eminence Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, and Dr. Thierry Bonaventura, communication manager of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, were also present.
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