The Prayer to St. Joseph

The prayer Leo XIII gave the Church to the guardian of the Holy Family — protector of fathers, workers, and the dying.

The man who guarded the Holy Family is given to guard us. The Prayer to St. Joseph of Pope Leo XIII is the Church's appeal to the foster father of Christ — the worker, the silent protector, the patron of a happy death — to defend the family of God as he once defended the Child and His Mother. For a Catholic father, no patron is closer to home.

All prayers →

The Prayer to St. Joseph (Leo XIII)

To you, O blessed Joseph

To you, O blessed Joseph, do we come in our tribulation, and having implored the help of your most holy Spouse, we confidently invoke your patronage also. Through that charity which bound you to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and through the paternal love with which you embraced the Child Jesus, we humbly beg you graciously to regard the inheritance which Jesus Christ has purchased by his Blood, and with your power and strength to aid us in our necessities. O most watchful Guardian of the Holy Family, defend the chosen children of Jesus Christ; O most loving father, ward off from us every contagion of error and corrupting influence; O our most mighty protector, be kind to us and from heaven assist us in our struggle with the power of darkness; and, as once you rescued the Child Jesus from deadly peril, so now protect God's Holy Church from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity; shield, too, each one of us by your constant protection, so that, supported by your example and your aid, we may be able to live piously, to die in holiness, and to obtain eternal happiness in heaven. Amen.

When to pray it

Pope Leo XIII gave this prayer in his 1889 encyclical Quamquam Pluries and asked that it be added after the Rosary, especially in October (the month of the Rosary) and through the month of St. Joseph (March). Pray it for your family, for the protection of the Church, and for the grace of a holy death — St. Joseph, who died in the arms of Jesus and Mary, is the patron of a happy death.

Why fathers pray to St. Joseph

St. Joseph is the model and patron of fathers, workers, and the universal Church (declared Patron of the Universal Church by Bl. Pius IX in 1870). He guarded the two most precious lives on earth with his labor and his silence, asking nothing. A Catholic man who wants to be the protector and provider of his own household goes to Joseph to learn how. To go further, pray the 33-Day Consecration to St. Joseph.

Keep praying with us — free: