Prayer Library

The Litany of St. Joseph is one of six litanies approved by the Holy See for public liturgical use in the Latin Rite. Composed gradually through the 17th and 18th centuries as devotion to St. Joseph deepened across the Catholic world, the litany received its formal Magisterial approval from Pope St. Pius X on March 18, 1909 — the eve of the Feast of St. Joseph — for the Spouse of Mary, foster father of Jesus, and Patron of the Universal Church. The litany's structure follows the pattern of other approved Catholic litanies: a Kyrie opening, a Trinitarian invocation, and then a long sequence of invocations addressing St. Joseph under distinct titles, each with the response 'Pray for us.' The titles trace the arc of his vocation: 'Illustrious son of David,' 'Light of patriarchs,' 'Spouse of the Mother of God,' 'Chaste guardian of the Virgin,' 'Foster father of the Son of God,' 'Diligent protector of Christ,' 'Head of the Holy Family,' 'Joseph most just,' 'Joseph most chaste,' 'Joseph most prudent,' 'Mirror of patience,' 'Lover of poverty,' 'Model of workers,' 'Glory of family life,' 'Guardian of virgins,' 'Pillar of families,' 'Solace of the afflicted,' 'Hope of the sick,' 'Patron of the dying,' 'Terror of demons,' 'Protector of Holy Church.' In May 2021, in connection with the Year of St. Joseph (December 2020 - December 2021) and his apostolic letter Patris Corde, Pope Francis formally added seven new invocations to the litany, drawn directly from the language of Patris Corde: 'Guardian of the Redeemer,' 'Servant of Christ,' 'Minister of salvation,' 'Support in difficulties,' 'Patron of exiles,' 'Patron of the afflicted,' and 'Patron of the poor.' These additions reflect Francis's specific pastoral framing of St. Joseph as a model for fathers, workers, and the marginalized in the contemporary world.

St. Joseph

The Litany of Trust is a modern Catholic litany composed around 2010 by Sister Faustina Maria Pia, SV, of the Sisters of Life — the religious community founded in 1991 by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York to serve pregnant women in crisis and to witness to the sacredness of every human life from conception to natural death. The litany emerged from Sister Faustina Maria Pia's own interior struggle with trust — specifically, the cluster of fears that hover under the surface of contemporary Catholic life: the fear of being unloved, of being abandoned, of being a disappointment, of being unable to forgive oneself, of being incapable of love. The litany names each of these fears in turn ('From the fear of being forgotten…' / 'From the fear of being unloved…' / 'From the fear that I am unloveable…') and asks for deliverance with the response 'Deliver me, Jesus.' The second movement of the litany — and the part for which it is best known — names twenty truths about Jesus that the praying believer is asked to entrust herself to: 'That You are continually holding me in existence… That You love me… That You see me… That You see the past, the present, and the future, and know what I need… That You will provide for me… That You are gentle and humble of heart…' To each, the response is 'Jesus, I trust in You.' The litany has spread virally through Catholic young adult ministry, women's groups, and social media — it is one of the most-shared Catholic prayers of the 2010s and 2020s. The Sisters of Life publish it freely on their website (sistersoflife.org) for personal and parish use, encouraging its reproduction in bulletins, retreat programs, and small-group settings. The litany is appropriate for: anxiety and the cluster of contemporary mental-health struggles that present as fear of unworthiness; recovery from spiritual scrupulosity (the over-conscientious moral self-judgment that can occlude the experience of God's mercy); the early days of a difficult diagnosis (when fear of the future is the first crisis to address); grief, when the absence of a loved one feels like the absence of God; financial hardship when scarcity-thinking has taken over; and any moment when the believer notices she has been operating from fear rather than from faith.

Sister Faustina Maria Pia, SV (Sisters of Life — author)

The Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary — known traditionally as the Litany of Loreto — is the most ancient and beloved Marian litany of the Latin Church. The litany takes its common name from the Holy House of Loreto in the Italian Marches, where pilgrims have prayed it continuously since the late Middle Ages; the tradition holds that the small stone house in which Mary received the Annunciation was translated by angels from Nazareth to Loreto in the thirteenth century, and the litany became the formal prayer of that pilgrimage. Pope Sixtus V formally approved the litany for liturgical and devotional use in 1587, granting indulgences for its public recitation. Over the centuries successive popes have added invocations as the Church's understanding of Marian doctrine has matured: Pope Pius VII added 'Help of Christians' in 1815 after his liberation from Napoleon's captivity; Pope Pius IX added 'Queen Conceived without Original Sin' after the 1854 definition of the Immaculate Conception; Pope Pius XII added 'Queen Assumed into Heaven' after the 1950 definition of the Assumption; Pope St. John Paul II added 'Mother of the Church' in 1980 and 'Queen of Families' in 1995. Most recently, Pope Francis added 'Mother of Mercy,' 'Mother of Hope,' and 'Comfort of Migrants' in 2020. The structure of the litany moves through three categories of invocations: titles drawn from Mary's relationship to the Trinity ('Holy Mother of God,' 'Mother of Christ,' 'Mother of the Church'), titles drawn from Marian virtues and types ('Virgin most prudent,' 'Mirror of justice,' 'Mystical rose,' 'Tower of David'), and titles drawn from Mary's queenship and intercession ('Queen of angels,' 'Queen of all saints,' 'Queen of peace'). The accumulating titles together form a portrait of Mary's place in the economy of salvation as the Church has come to know her.

The Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of six litanies approved by the Holy See for public liturgical use in the Latin Rite. Composed in 1718 by Sister Jeanne Madeleine Joly of the Visitation Order in Dijon (a member of the same religious community that gave the Church St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the seer of the Sacred Heart apparitions at Paray-le-Monial), the litany was refined and amplified over the next century through devotional use among Visitandines, Jesuits, and the broader Catholic devotional tradition. Pope Leo XIII gave the litany formal approval for public liturgical use on April 2, 1899 — the same year he consecrated the entire human race to the Sacred Heart in his encyclical Annum Sacrum. The litany is structured as thirty-three invocations of Christ's Heart under distinct titles — 'Heart of Jesus, formed by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mother,' 'Heart of Jesus, furnace of charity,' 'Heart of Jesus, patient and rich in mercy,' and so on — corresponding to the thirty-three years of Christ's earthly life. To each invocation the response 'Have mercy on us' is given. The thirty-three-fold pattern is contemplative: the believer's heart, by sustained repetition, is drawn into the dispositions of Christ's Heart — humility, patience, mercy, charity. The litany is one of the principal devotions of First Friday observance and is traditionally prayed during the month of June (the Month of the Sacred Heart), in the Sacred Heart Novena, and in the Holy Hour of reparation Christ asked of St. Margaret Mary.

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

The Litany of the Saints is the oldest and most solemn litany in the Catholic Church. Its roots reach back to the early centuries — fragments of the form appear in seventh-century Western liturgical books, and Pope Gregory the Great instituted the great litanic processions of Rome in 590, asking the faithful to call upon the saints by name in supplication during plague. The litany became part of the Easter Vigil baptismal liturgy at least by the eighth century. Its current Roman-rite text was formally fixed by Pope Pius V in 1568 and revised in the post-Vatican II liturgical reform (1969). The structure unfolds in five major movements: (1) Kyrie eleison invocations and Trinitarian petitions; (2) the great roll-call of saints by name — Blessed Virgin Mary first, then archangels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael), patriarchs and prophets (Abraham, Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist), apostles and evangelists (Peter, Paul, Andrew, John, James, etc.), martyrs (Stephen, Lawrence, Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch, Cyprian, Sebastian, Agatha, Agnes), confessor-bishops and doctors (Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose), founders and virgins (Anthony of the Desert, Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Ávila); (3) petitions of deliverance ('From all evil, deliver us, O Lord'); (4) petitions of supplication ('That You would govern and preserve Your holy Church, we beseech You, hear us'); (5) closing Agnus Dei and collect. The litany is one of the principal prayers of the Catholic liturgy and is used at: the Easter Vigil (during the Liturgy of Baptism), Holy Saturday baptisms, priestly and episcopal ordinations (the candidates lie prostrate while the gathered church sings the litany over them), the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) at the Rite of Election, the dedication of a church, the consecration of altars, and the conferral of religious vows. It is also customary in many parishes on the Solemnity of All Saints (November 1), at funerals of priests and religious, in moments of grave public need (war, pandemic, natural disaster), and as the closing prayer of pilgrimage processions. The litany names many saints; the local diocese or community is also free to add the patron saints of the local church.