Pope Leo to join 1M kids to pray Rosary for Peace
Pope Leo XIV will pray the Rosary for peace with hundreds of children at the Lourdes Grotto in the Vatican Gardens on October 1. The gathering will launch Aid to the Church in Need’s worldwide “One Million Children Praying the Rosary” week, running October 1–7 and ending on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Children and communities across many countries, including places affected by conflict and instability, are expected to join the prayer initiative. The campaign invites families and other adults to pray alongside children, and offers multilingual materials for participants.
about 7 hours ago
Pope Leo XIV is set to join children in Rome on October 1 to pray the Rosary for peace, opening a weeklong international campaign organized by Aid to the Church in Need. The initiative invites children and communities around the world to pray for peace and unity, with events scheduled through October 7.
The prayer will take place at 5 p.m. Rome time at the Lourdes Grotto in the Vatican Gardens. Between 700 and 1,000 children from Rome’s schools and parishes are expected; the Pope will join them later in the Rosary.
In Lourdes the previous Sunday, Leo had urged Catholics and Christian communities to pray the Rosary throughout October, with the intention that wars end and peace be established among peoples in conflict.
The Vatican event will launch the October 1–7 edition of “One Million Children Praying the Rosary,” an initiative promoted for more than 20 years by the Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need. For the first time, the campaign will run for a full week, allowing communities in different places to choose a suitable day while sharing the same intention; it ends on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Organizers anticipate participation in many countries, including communities in the Bolivian Amazon and parishes in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Sierra Leone. The campaign began in Venezuela in 2005 and has since developed into a worldwide prayer effort involving children, families, schools, parishes, and Church groups.
The 2026 campaign draws inspiration from the message of Fatima, “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph,” and from words attributed to Saint Pio of Pietrelcina: “When one million children pray the Rosary, the world will change.” Adults—including parents, teachers, clergy, catechists, and religious—are also invited to pray alongside children. Participants may pray just one decade rather than the full Rosary.
Aid to the Church in Need offers prayer materials in several languages and invites participants to register, so their participation can be shown on an international map. The initiative is organized with the Shrine of Fatima, the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, and the World Apostolate of Fatima; World Rosary Day is joining the campaign for the first time this year.
Communal prayer as a Catholic response to conflict and violence
Communal prayer is a distinctly Catholic response to conflict and violence—not because prayer replaces practical action, but because it turns people toward God and forms them to pursue peace together. The Church teaches that prayer opens the heart both to God and to respectful, loving encounter with others; liturgical prayer, especially the Eucharist, nourishes the Church’s work for peace.
Gathering to pray amid violence can interrupt the isolation, fear, hatred, and desire for revenge that conflict feeds. Pope Leo XIV calls prayer a way of joining our limited human efforts to God’s possibilities, so that our thoughts, words, and deeds can break the cycle of evil and serve a kingdom marked by dignity, understanding, and forgiveness. He also says prayer should lead us to reject violence not just in words, but in our conduct and communities.
This does not mean that prayer makes violence harmless or requires victims to ignore injustice. Rather, it asks everyone—including those who are not direct victims—to resist hatred and indifference, and to see those who suffer, especially children and other vulnerable people. At a prayer vigil for peace, Pope Leo urged people to “disarm” their hearts and look at events through the eyes of the wounded, the poor, and the displaced.
Catholic communal prayer is not an escape from responsibility. Pope Francis joined the call to pray for peace with a call to work for reconciliation: to reject violence, overcome indifference, listen to others, and pursue dialogue. Pope Leo likewise says that building peace belongs to everyone, in homes, schools, neighborhoods, and civic and religious communities—not only to political leaders.
That responsibility can take different forms: caring for people harmed by violence, helping repair damaged relationships, pursuing dialogue and mediation, and working for just conditions. In the case of gun violence, the U.S. bishops have called for mercy and peacebuilding alongside practical measures to prevent harm and support people in need. Prayer gives these efforts a spiritual foundation, but does not make them unnecessary.
The Church teaches that violence is not a proper solution to problems: it attacks the very dignity and life it claims to defend. Communal prayer makes that conviction visible. It gathers people across personal or social divisions, places their hope in God rather than domination, and asks them to become instruments of reconciliation. Pope John XXIII encouraged Christians to pray with and for one another, including for those responsible for decisions affecting peoples’ lives, and for the human family as a whole.
So communal prayer is both petition and formation: the community asks God for peace, and in praying together learns to serve it. Its credibility depends on what follows—solidarity with those who suffer, rejection of vengeance, and sustained work for justice, dialogue, and reconciliation.