Support Life Sunday 2026
Support Life Sunday 2026: “Living Peace”
Catholics are being encouraged to reject a growing acceptance of war and rediscover their duty to be active peacemakers as the Church marks Support Life Sunday on October 11.
Support Life Sunday provides an opportunity to focus on how we can better support a culture of love and life through prayer and action.
The bishops' Nathaniel Centre for Bioethics has prepared resources to mark the day. The bishops' Nathaniel Centre for Bioethics has prepared resources to mark the day. They can be accessed in this Google Drive folder.
Prayer for Life
In July 2026 Pope Leo shared this prayer for life as part of his worldwide prayer network:
Lord of life,
You created us in love and called us to live in fullness.
Each person is a sacred gift that reflects your face,
from the first instant of existence
to the final breath of their journey on earth.
Today we ask for the grace to recognize and protect
the unique and unrepeatable value of every human being.
May we learn to welcome life unconditionally,
to tenderly care for fragility,
to accompany each stage with respect,
and to bravely defend those who have no voice.
Forgive us, Lord,
when we fall into indifference or the culture of discard,
when we fail to see in others a being worthy of love.
Give us a new heart, always ready to choose life,
and generous hands that protect it through concrete actions.
Make your Church a living witness of the Gospel of life,
an open home where every life is celebrated,
where no one feels unwanted,
and where dignity is always honored and protected.
Lord Jesus,
may we love life as You love it:
with tenderness, fidelity, and self-giving.
May we proclaim, in words and actions,
that every human life is worth the total gift of ourselves.
Amen.
So how do we support life? What is our role?
Pope St John Paul II reminds us “Christ needs you to enlighten the world and to show it the ‘path to life’ (Psalm 16:11). The challenge is to make the Church’s ‘yes’ to Life concrete and effective. The struggle will be long, and it needs each one of you. Place your intelligence, your talents, your enthusiasm, your compassion and your fortitude at the service of life!”
He also writes in Evangelium Vitae:
“. . . we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the ‘culture of death’ and the ‘culture of life’. We find ourselves not only faced with but necessarily in the midst of this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.”
