The Pope’s September prayer intention invites us to view water as God’s gift and as a right “without borders”.
Water, the “source of fruitfulness, freshness, and hope,” as the Pope himself defines it in his prayer, is a scarce, unsafe and inaccessible resource for millions of people.
For this reason, Pope Leo XIV is dedicating his prayer intention for the month of September to the care of water as the Season of Creation begins.
Through the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network’s Pray with the Pope campaign, the Holy Father invites the faithful and all people of goodwill to join in his prayer that humanity might learn to safeguard water with gratitude, justice and responsibility.
In his prayer, Pope Leo thanks the “Lord of Life” for the gift of water, a “symbol of your grace and love that renews us through Baptism”.
The Pope begs forgiveness that it has been turned “into a commodity” and that we have forgotten “that it is a universal gift, a right without borders.”
He also expresses sorrow over “so many brothers and sisters who lack clean water, who walk for miles to find it, who become ill due to its scarcity.”
His prayer concludes asking that the Holy Spirit might transform the faithful into “pilgrims of the essential,” capable of living simply, denouncing waste and pollution, and defending the right of every person “to drink without fear and without inequality”.
Water: a right that continues to be threatened
The Pope’s intention addresses a fact confirmed by international statistics. According to the August 2025 report published by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund (WHO/UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene, entitled Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000-2024 , 2.1bn people still lack access to safely managed drinking water.
For some, access is, for example, intermittent, insufficient, too costly or too far. In addition, 106m people depend directly on rivers, lakes and other untreated surface water.
Although access to safely managed drinking water increased from 68 to 74 percent between 2015 and 2024, the same report warns that lower-income countries need to progress seven times more rapidly than they currently are to achieve universal access by 2030.
The lack of safe water goes hand in hand with the lack of sanitation and hygiene. 3.4bn people lack access to safely managed sanitation; 1.7bn people lack basic hygiene services at home; and 611m people have no means to wash their hands, according to statistics reported by WHO/UNICEF (August 2025). In addition, an estimated 1.4m deaths per year are associated with unsafe water and the lack of hygiene.
A constant concern of Papal teaching
The Pope inaugurated the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on September 1. This date also inaugurates the ecumenical Season of Creation, which will conclude on October 4, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. This year’s theme is “Living Water.”
And so, the theme of the Pope’s message for this day is: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Is 2:4).
Through it, he wishes to emphasise the link between armed conflicts and the deterioration of the environment.
It is not the first time his monthly prayer intention has addressed the care of creation. In September 2025, for example, Pope Leo invited us to pray “for our relationship with all of creation,” asking that we encounter God’s presence “in all creation”.
The growing scarcity of fresh water, the pollution of water sources, and the inequality of access to this vital resource are seriously affecting humanity. It is urgent that we learn how to live more simply, more humanely, and more connected to Mother Earth.
Pope Francis’s intention in The Pope Video released in September 2021 was “for an environmentally sustainable lifestyle,” in which he invited us to adopt a “simpler” and more “sustainable lifestyle.”
A constant concern of papal teaching
“Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water, because they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity,” Pope Francis wrote in his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’.
The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network highlights that the Church supports this commitment by advocating for access to drinkable water and sanitation services, promoting projects that make water accessible to people without it in numerous areas, through cleanup campaigns and educational activities that promote water conservation and hygiene.
Its advocacy is focused on rural areas, schools, and the poorest communities, as well as persons who have been deprived of freedom, migrants, the elderly, people with disabilities, or those who live in war zones.
This prayer intention is also an invitation to personal action: taking shorter showers, fixing leaks, turning off faucets not in use, avoiding polluting drains and rivers, consuming water responsibly and moderately, and creating networks with other people and communities committed to safeguarding water.
