Community
Prayer requests
One way to ask for prayer publicly, and one way to keep it entirely private. Both are read by a human first.
Asking for prayer is not a performance and it does not have to be well written. One sentence is a real request. You are also not required to explain the situation, justify why it hurts, or disclose anything you would rather keep to yourself. God is not waiting on the details, and neither is anyone praying here.
There are two routes on this page because they carry different levels of exposure. A public request becomes readable by anyone once a moderator approves it, including people who know you, and it may be indexed by search engines. A private intention is never published. If you have any hesitation, use the private form.
Please do not include full names, exact addresses, phone numbers, workplaces, medical record details, identifying legal details, or information about another person without their consent. See the privacy center and the community guidelines for the full detail.
Public community prayer request
Moderated before it is published, then visible to the whole reading room.
Sign in or create a free account to submit a public prayer request.
Private prayer intention
Never published. Seen only by you and authorized prayer moderators.
Sign in or create a free account to send a private prayer intention.
What happens after you send a request
A public request goes into a moderation queue and does not appear anywhere until someone with moderator access approves it. Nothing publishes automatically. We do not promise how quickly that happens, and this page is not watched around the clock, so please do not send a request in place of contacting someone who can actually help today.
Requests from new accounts are read in full. Members who have written here over time and have no report history may be handled more lightly, though no request skips review. A request signed Anonymous is reviewed the same way, with extra care: anonymity is occasionally used to publish something about another person that would never be written under a name. A request that identifies or describes someone else, presses a private grievance, or reads as an accusation will not be published.
If a request is not published, that is a decision about what can safely be public, not a judgment about you or your prayer. You may rewrite and send it again, or send it privately instead.
What to leave out, and what is enough
Leave out anything that would let a reader identify you or anyone else: surnames, parish or workplace names, addresses, phone numbers, school or shelter names, medical record detail, and the specifics of an ongoing legal, custody, or safeguarding matter. If you are keeping a record of abuse, keep it somewhere private and use the reporting routes on Find help.
You may write about your own experience of being harmed. Please do not name the person who harmed you here. That is partly for your protection and partly because this room cannot investigate, verify, or adjudicate anything, and a public accusation it cannot handle would help no one.
These are all complete requests: please pray for my marriage. Please pray for my son. Please pray for a medical result this week. Please pray for me, I cannot say why. Please pray for someone who died.
Boundaries and what you owe no one
You do not owe anyone an update, an explanation, gratitude, or a reply. You may ask for prayer and never return to the thread. If a reply presses you for detail, tells you what your suffering means, offers unsolicited spiritual direction, asks you to move to a private conversation, or asks you for money, use the report control on that reply. Reporting is private and the person is not told who reported them.
No one on this site is presented to you as a priest, therapist, doctor, or lawyer, and there is no verified clergy badge here. Treat any claim of authority in a reply as unverified. Nothing written in response to your request is spiritual direction, diagnosis, legal advice, or a ruling about your marriage or your sacraments.
If this is urgent
Prayer is not a crisis service, and asking for it is not a substitute for emergency, medical, mental health, legal, or safeguarding support. If you are in danger, thinking of ending your life, or worried about a child or vulnerable adult, please use the safety page for crisis lines and a quick exit, or Find help for services. You can do both: ask for prayer and get help. One has never replaced the other.
Praying for the requests you read
If you came here to pray for others rather than to ask, the ordinary Catholic ways are enough. Pray in your own words for the person as they signed themselves. Offer an Our Father, a Hail Mary, a decade of the Rosary, or the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Hold them in silence. Offer the hardness of your own day for them. Ask for their intention at Mass, or offer your Communion for them. Pray for the dead where someone has died, without claiming to know anything about that person's judgment.
The prayer companion gathers prayers by what a person is carrying. When you reply to someone, short and plain works best. Saying that you prayed for them is enough, and it is a great deal.