Health and healing: prayers in Catholicism

Texts from their published editions. Guidance on what this tradition does at this moment is on the occasion page, and background on the tradition is at /traditions/catholic.

Texts from their published editions

Each text below comes from the edition named under it and was checked twice, independently, before it appeared. Neither check was a person. Where the two disagreed by even one character, the text is not shown here. That is a claim about wording only: these are not selected or endorsed for any particular situation, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed them. Older spelling is kept as the edition prints it. The full record, including the texts we held back because the two transcriptions disagreed, is at the verification record.

The Hail Mary (Baltimore Manual 1889)

The central Marian prayer of Latin Catholicism, built from the Lucan greeting plus a later intercessory petition fixed in the sixteenth century. It is the repeated unit of the rosary and of the Angelus, and it is the prayer most often said at a sickbed or deathbed. Recited by anyone, at any time, with no conditions of office or state.

English · A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Catholic Laity, 1889Read twice, independently

Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

John Murphy and Company, Baltimore, 1889. Published 1889, before 1929, US public domain. Source

Out of copyright in the United States on the basis stated here, and free to reuse there. Please keep the citation with it.

This prayer’s own page · How this text was verified

Content last changed 6 October 2026. Dates come from this page’s own revision history, not from the last time the site was deployed.

Nothing here has been signed by a reviewer credentialed in this tradition. When that happens, reviewed prayers appear above these, and these stay where they are, as an anthology. How that works.