Pope’s May Prayer Intention: That All People Will Have Food

Pope Leo’s prayer intention for May 2026 is especially pointed for Americans.

The Holy Father asks us to pray that the no one would suffer starvation in this world of plenty. He specifically asks us to pray for food banks and aid efforts which seek to provide food for those who do not have enough.

We live in a time when the President of the United States has unilaterally chosen to defund USAID. This move sentenced hundreds of thousands of people to slowly starve to death.

At the same time, our president, along with his slavish followers in Congress, decimated funding for food banks here in America by passing the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.”

We may not want to admit it, but we have all walked past Lazarus in our lives. It is far easier to turn away and ignore suffering people than it is to stop and help them. It is easier still to turn a blind eye to the actions of our government when it commits evil in our name.

But when we ignore human suffering in such a flagrant fashion that our actions impose food shortage, hunger and even death by starvation on so many people, our only possible defense is that we didn’t know. We are not slaves who bear no responsibility for what our government does. We are Americans.

We elected these people. We the People put them in control of our government. Our only real excuse is that somehow or other we didn’t know. But we know now. The question before us is simple. Now that we know, what are we going to do about it?

The pope’s prayer intention has power. You and I can gain an indulgence for ourselves or someone else by praying the Pope’s prayer intention when we pray the Rosary or spend time in Adoration. We also have to go to confession and receive the Eucharist. Perhaps most important, and definitely hardest of all, we can’t be in love with our sins. We have to want to lay them down at the foot of the Cross.

I’m not a theologian, but I don’t think we can gain any sort of indulgence if we do these things — pray/confess/mass — like someone checking off a list or performing a magic incantation. I don’t think we can fool God. I think we have to mean it.

Praying the Pope’s prayer intention honestly, joining our intent with his intention, will guide us to a deeper conversion in Christ. The Rosary can do that, as well.

All these things are helps the Church gives us to guide us along the Way that leads to salvation and eternal life. Among other things, they encourage us to see and give up our sins, including the sins of indifference to the suffering of other people; including the times we walk past Lazarus.