St Francis Xavier's prayer for those who do not know Christ
Oratio pro conversione infidelium
Eternal God, maker of all things, remember that the souls of those who do not have the faith are also your work, made in your image and likeness. See, Lord, how hell is filling with them, to the dishonour of your name. Remember that Jesus your Son suffered the cruellest of deaths for their salvation. Do not permit, I beg you, that your Son should go on being despised. Let yourself be moved by the prayers of your saints and of the Church, the bride of your most holy Son. Remember your mercy. Forget their idolatry and their unbelief, and grant that they too may come at last to know the Lord Jesus Christ whom you have sent, who is our salvation, our life and our resurrection, through whom we have been rescued and set free, and to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Pass it on
In Latin
Ætérne rerum ómnium efféctor Deus, meménto abs te ánimas infidélium procreátas, eásque ad imáginem et similitúdinem tuam cónditas. Ecce, Dómine, in oppróbrium tuum his ipsis inférnus implétur. Meménto Iesum Fílium tuum pro illórum salúte atrocíssimam subiísse necem. Noli, quæso, Dómine, ultra permíttere ut Fílius tuus ab infidélibus contemnátur; sed précibus sanctórum virórum et Ecclésiæ, sanctíssimi Fílii tui sponsæ, placátus, recordáre misericórdiæ tuæ, et oblítus idololatríæ et infidelitátis eórum éffice ut ipsi quoque agnóscant aliquándo quem misísti Dóminum Iesum Christum, qui est salus, vita et resurréctio nostra, per quem salváti et liberáti sumus, cui sit glória per infiníta sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.
When this prayer is prayed
Said by the man who baptised more people than anyone since the Apostles, walking through India, the Moluccas and Japan, and who died in 1552 on an island within sight of a China he was never allowed to enter. It is a sixteenth-century missionary's prayer and it speaks his century's vocabulary — «infidels», «idolatry» — which is left standing here because it is his and not ours. What it actually asks God to remember is that he made them too. Pius IX attached an indulgence of three hundred days to it by rescript of 24 May 1847.