Pray with the Pope: For the Suffering of Children

by Chris Chatteris SJ · February 2, 2026

Every month Fr Chris Chatteris SJ reflects on Pope Leo XIV’s prayer intention

Intention: For children with incurable diseases. Let us pray that children suffering from incurable diseases and their families receive the necessary medical care and support, never losing strength and hope.

Tucked away in a quiet corner of Auckland Park in Johannesburg, there is a medium-sized building called The Woodside Sanctuary. The sign on the gate says that it is “a home for the profoundly intellectually disabled”.

The website informs us that some of the residents are as young as three. This detail suggests that this indeed is a place where children with incurable conditions can find the care and loving support that they need.

It is a sad indictment on our society that The Sanctuary faces the prospect of closure because of a lack of funding. It is presently engaged in a desperate fundraising exercise called “Save Our Sanctuary” to avoid having to close and disperse its residents to an uncertain future.

Nothing highlights the problem of pain more starkly than the suffering of children. Asked by a journalist why we live in a world where children suffer, Pope Francis famously answered: “I don’t know.” He was admitting that there are depths to the mystery of suffering which are truly perplexing and profoundly painful.

His answer was rather wise, I think. The parents and family of children suffering from incurable diseases probably don’t want to hear any philosophical or even theological explanations as to why their little ones are subjected to the problem of pain.

However, I think one can ask the question as to whether it is preferable to be a believer or a non-believer when caught up in the terrible situation of seriously and even terminally ill children.

The benefit of faith

To be a non-believer would seem to me to leave one prey to an unmitigated darkness and despair. On the contrary, to be able to believe in a God of love whose only Son has plumbed the depths of the human condition and returned from the dead to offer us eternal, risen life, is certainly a basis for hope — even if I don’t understand why this God of love allows this present suffering of my own particular child.

One thing which the family of a suffering child sometimes may find helpful is permission to complain to the Lord. As members of the Covenant, we have a special relationship of intimacy with him, which means that we have the prophetic right to make our pain and perplexity known to God.

As for the children themselves, we should never underestimate their capacity for faith. Luke 10:21 strikes me as relevant here. In what seems like a sudden moment of intense joy, Jesus proclaims: “I bless you, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, for hiding these things from the wise and the prudent and revealing them to mere children.”

“Mere” children? Some translations read, “you have revealed them to the childlike”, or “to the little ones”. Indeed, sometimes the fortitude of faith of children in adversity can remind us that they are not at all “mere children” but something much greater than that.