Pray for Priests

In my parish, there are a group of women who pray the rosary daily for our priests. We each have one decade to pray daily. In that way, we pray all the mysteries of the Rosary in one day for our priests.

Pray for priests daily whether you pray a rosary, a decade of the rosary, or general prayers for priests.

Here are some prayers you might like to pray, too.

These prayers come from a collection by the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia out of Nashville, Tennessee. Here’s the link to the pdf which you can download. Click HERE

Prayers for Priests

Prayer of St. Therese

O Jesus, eternal Priest, keep your priests within the shelter of Your Sacred Heart, where none may touch them. Keep unstained their anointed hands, which daily touch Your Sacred Body. Keep unsullied their lips, daily purpled with your Precious Blood. Keep pure and unearthly their hearts, sealed with the sublime mark of the priesthood. Let Your holy love surround them and shield them from the world’s contagion. Bless their labors with abundant fruit and may the souls to whom they minister be their joy and consolation here and in heaven their beautiful and everlasting crown. Amen.

Prayer for Priests by J. J. Cardinal Carberry Archbishop of St. Louis 1968-1979

O Jesus, our great High Priest, hear my humble prayers on behalf of your priests. Give them a deep faith, a bright and firm hope and a burning love which will ever increase in the course of their priestly life. In their loneliness, comfort them. In their sorrows, strengthen them. In their frustrations, point out to them that it is through suffering that the soul is purified, and show them that they are needed by the Church; they are needed by souls; they are needed for the work of redemption. O loving Mother Mary, Mother of Priests, take to your heart your sons who are close to you because of their priestly ordination and because of the power which they have received to carry on the work of Christ in a world which needs them so much. Be their comfort, be their joy, be their strength, and especially help them to live and to defend the ideals of consecrated celibacy.

Prayer for the Sanctification of the Clergy by Father Peter John Cameron, O.P

Divine Savior, Jesus Christ, who has entrusted the work of your redemption to priests as your representatives, I offer you through the hands of your Most Holy Mother, this present day, whole and entire, with all its prayers, works and sacrifices, its joys and sorrows, for your bishops, priests, deacons and those preparing for the priesthood. I pray especially for ____; protect him, Lord, and make him holy. Give us truly holy priest, inflamed with the fire of your divine love, who seek nothing but your greater glory and the salvation of souls. And you, Mary, good Mother of priests, protect all priests, bishops, deacons, and seminarians from dangers to their holy vocation, and with the loving hands of a mother, lead back to the Good Shepherd those unfortunate priests who, unfaithful to their exalted vocation, have gone astray. Amen.

Prayers for Priests by Cardinal Cushing

O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests; for Your unfaithful and tepid priests; for Your priests laboring at home, or abroad in distant mission fields; for Your tempted priests; for Your lonely and desolate priests; for Your young priests; for Your dying priests; for the souls of Your priests in purgatory. Above all I recommend to You the priests dearest to me; the priest who baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins; the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your body and Blood in Holy Communion; the priests who taught and instructed me; all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way. O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Ame