Pope Leo XIV released the “Pray with the Pope” video accompanying his prayer intention for the month of September 2026, which was “For the care of water.”
In the video produced by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, the pope prays that water may be a “source of fruitfulness, freshness and hope,” and recognizes that water is “a right without borders.”
Water, he says, “quenches thirst, nourishes the earth and heals wounds,” as well as serving for Christians as a symbol of God’s grace and love for us and our renewal in baptism.
“Forgive us for turning it into a commodity, forgetting that it is a universal gift, a right without borders, meant for all your children,” he prays. “We see with pain so many brothers and sisters who lack clean water, who walk for miles to find it, who become ill due to its scarcity.”
Pope Leo goes on to pray that the Holy Spirit may make Christians “pilgrims of the essential,” who are able to live simply and avoid all waste or pollution.
He encourages us to defend everyone’s right to water, so that all may drink “without fear and without inequality.”
“May our care for water be a sign of love for the Creator and a commitment to the lives of the poor, educating new generations to value and protect the Earth’s resources,” he concludes.
The theme for this year’s Season of Creation is “Living Water,” recalling the growing scarcity of fresh water and the inequality of access to it.
Christians around the world celebrate the Season of Creation from Sept. 1 — the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation — until Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
According to a press release accompanying the pope’s intention, the pope is inviting everyone to take personal action by fixing leaks, taking shorter showers, turning off faucets not in use, and avoiding polluting drains and rivers.
Promoted and supported by various organizations, including the Laudato Si’ Movement, the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, and the Anglican Communion, the Day of Prayer for Creation goes back almost three decades.
The observance was first established in 1989 by Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I, who proclaimed Sept. 1 as a Day of Prayer for Creation for the Orthodox Church. The date marks the beginning of the Orthodox ecclesiastical year and recalls the biblical account of the world’s creation.
In 2007, the “Third European Ecumenical Assembly” proposed extending the observance into five weeks, and the World Council of Churches subsequently invited Christian communities around the world to continue the celebration through Oct. 4.
In 2015, shortly after the publication of his encyclical “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis established the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation in the Catholic Church, aligning it with the Orthodox observance on Sept. 1 and formally embracing the Season of Creation.
Pope Leo XIV’s decree establishing the Missa Pro Custodia Creationis (Mass for the Care of Creation), together with a new formulary for the Roman Missal, represents another step in the Catholic Church’s commitment to respond to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, as it supports local churches in their efforts to care for our common home and promote new paths to achieve integral human ecology.
UN agencies report that around 2.1 billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water, while 106 million rely exclusively on rivers, lakes or other untreated surface water.
Father Cristóbal Fones, international director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, notes that water is one of the great essentials of life.
“This prayer intention invites us to think deeply about creation, to safeguard it, and to look with God’s eyes on those who today have to walk for miles to obtain a bit of clean water, and to convert what we see into concrete actions that demonstrate moderation, care, and solidarity,” he said in the press release. “No one should live without water, and no one should die because they lack water.”