Prayer of Pope John Paul II to Our Lady of Guadalupe
O Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the true God and Mother of the Church!, who from this place reveal your clemency and your pity to all those who ask for your protection, hear the prayer that we address to you with filial trust, and present it to your Son Jesus, our sole Redeemer.
Mother of Mercy, Teacher of hidden and silent sacrifice, to you, who come to meet us
sinners, we dedicate on this day all our being and all our love. We also dedicate to you
our life, our work, our joys, our infirmities and our sorrows. Grant peace, justice and
prosperity to our peoples; for we entrust to your care all that we have and all that we
are, our Lady and Mother. We wish to be entirely yours and to walk with you along the
way of complete faithfulness to Jesus Christ in His Church; hold us always with your
loving hand.
Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, we pray to you for all the Bishops, that
they may lead the faithful along paths of intense Christian life, of love and humble
service of God and souls. Contemplate this immense harvest, and intercede with the
Lord that He may instill a hunger for holiness in the whole people of God, and grant
abundant vocations of priests and religious, strong in the faith and zealous dispensers
of God’s mysteries.
Grant to our homes the grace of loving and respecting life in its beginnings, with the
same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God. Blessed
Virgin Mary, protect our families, so that they may always be united, and bless the
upbringing of our children.
Our hope, look upon us with compassion, teach us to go continually to Jesus and, if we
fall, help us to rise again, to return to Him, by means of the confession of our faults
and sins in the Sacrament of Penance, which gives peace to the soul.
We beg you to grant us a great love for all the holy Sacraments, which are, as it were,
the signs that your Son left us on earth.
Thus, Most Holy Mother, with the peace of God in our conscience, with our hearts free
from evil and hatred, we will be able to bring to all true joy and true peace, which come
to us from your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with God the Father and the Holy
Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.
His Holiness John Paul II
Mexico, January 1979. Visiting Her Basilica during his first foreign trip as Pope.
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