For people living on the margins

“How could we have reached this level of indifference?”, Pope Francis wonders in the video for the September prayer intention, in which he invites the faithful to pray for “people on the margins of society in subhuman living conditions, that they may not be neglected by institutions and never be cast out”. Images of homeless people lying down on the world’s side-walks, ignored and almost stepped on, scroll by as the Holy Father notes that a “homeless person who dies on the street will never appear among the top stories of search engines or newscast”. How can we “allow the ‘throwaway culture’ … to dominate our lives, our cities, our way of life?”, he continues.

Let us focus on the culture of acceptance and welcoming, he urges the faithful, the culture “of hospitality, of providing shelter, of giving a home, of offering love, of giving human warmth”.

Speaking about this month’s prayer intention, Fr Frédéric Fornos, sj , Director of the Worldwide Prayer Network, explained that the Holy Father “is calling for a different approach to poverty and exclusion. This also means prayer because prayer transforms our hearts”.

Available online at www.thepopevideo.org and translated into 23 languages, the video for the prayer intention for September was created and produced by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, in cooperation with La Machi Agency and the Dicastery for Communication.