The Pope’s prayer intention for September invites us to see water as a gift from God and as a “right without borders.”
Water is a scarce and inaccessible resource for millions of people. For this reason, Pope Leo XIV dedicates his September prayer intention to the care of water. The Holy Father does this because September is dedicated to the month of conservation in the Catholic Church and prayers are made for the care of all creation.
Through the Pope’s global prayer network’s “Pray with the Pope” campaign, the Holy Father invites believers and all people of good will to join him in his prayer that humanity may learn to protect water with gratitude, justice and responsibility, recognizing it as a “right without borders.”
In his prayer, Leo XIV thanks the “Lord of Life” for the gift of water, “a symbol of your grace and love that renews us through Baptism.” The Pope asks for forgiveness for having turned it into a “commodity,” for having forgotten “that it is a universal gift, a right without borders.” He also expresses sorrow for “so many brothers and sisters who lack clean water, who walk for miles to find it, who fall ill because of its scarcity.” His prayer ends with a prayer that the Holy Spirit may transform the faithful into “essential pilgrims” capable of living simply, condemning waste and pollution, and defending the right of every person “to drink without fear or inequality.”
According to the August 2025 report of the Joint Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Monitoring Programme (JMP) of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (WHO/UNICEF), “Progress in Household Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene 2000–2024,” 2.1 billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water. For some, access is intermittent, inadequate, too expensive or too far away. In addition, 106 million people depend directly on rivers, lakes and other untreated surface water. While access to safely managed drinking water increased from 68 percent to 74 percent between 2015 and 2024, the same report warns that lower-income countries will need to move seven times faster than they are now to achieve universal access by 2030.
The lack of safe water goes hand in hand with the lack of sanitation and hygiene. According to WHO/UNICEF statistics (August 2025), 3.4 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation and hygiene services; 1.7 billion people lack basic household hygiene services; and 611 million people lack facilities for handwashing. In addition, an estimated 1.4 million deaths per year are linked to unsafe water and hygiene.
No one should live without water and no one should die from lack of water.
Pope’s video message for September: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LhsgE7-AJQ