Pray the Rosary during October

The Holy Father has decided to invite all the faithful throughout the world to pray the Holy Rosary every day during the entire month of October; and to unite ourselves in this way, in communion and in penance, with the entire people of God, in asking the Holy Mother of God and Saint Michael the Archangel to protect the Church from the devil, who seems to be trying to divide us and to distance us from God.

In recent days, before his departure for the Baltic States, the Holy Father met with Father Fréderic Fornos, SJ, the International Director of the World Network of Prayer for the Pope; and asked him to spread this call for prayer throughout the world, to all the faithful, inviting them to conclude the recitation of the rosary with the ancient invocation: Sub Tuum Praesidium (Under your protection) and with the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, asking him to protect and to help us in our fight against evil (cf Rev 12:7-12).

This prayer - the Pontiff affirmed a few days ago, on 11 September, in a homily he offered at the Casa Santa Marta, quoting from the first book of Job - is our weapon against the Great Accuser who travels around the world seeking out accusations.  Only prayer can defeat him. The Russian mystics and the great saints of all traditions advised, in moments of spiritual turbulence, that the faithful should protect themselves under the mantle of the Holy Mother of God by pronouncing the invocation Sub Tuum Praesidium.

The Sub Tuum Praesidium invocation is worded as follows:

Sub tuum praesidium confugimus Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo Gloriosa et Benedicta.

Under your protection, we seek refuge O Holy Mother of God.  Do not despise our supplications for we are facing trials, but free us from every danger, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin.

With this intercessory request, the Holy Father is asking the faithful of the whole world to pray to the Holy Mother of God, asking her to place the Church under her protective mantle: to preserve her (the Church) from the attacks of the evil one, the great accuser, and to make her (the Church) at the same time always more aware of the faults, the mistakes, the abuses committed in the present and in the past and committed to fight without any hesitation so that evil will not be able to prevail.

The Holy Father has also asked that the recitation of the rosary during the month of October conclude with the prayer written by Pope Leo XIII:

Il Santo Padre ha chiesto anche che la recita del Santo Rosario durante il mese di ottobre si concluda con la preghiera scritta da Leone XIII:

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute, in infernum detrude. Amen.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in this battle. Be our defence against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.