A few days ago, Pope Francis announced he would lead a world-wide holy hour in honor of Corpus Christi Sunday. And while other Popes have offered holy hours regularly with large audiences on television, (such as at World Youth Day), a unified effort to invite all Catholics to a global holy hour is a first.

It is happening at 5pm Rome time at the Vatican. So that places it at 11am Eastern, 10am Central, 9am Mountain, 8am Pacific here in most of the United States.

You can watch it from the Vatican online and pray along. You might check your local Catholic television listings to see if they are covering it.

For some dioceses, parishes, etc, its a little bit of short notice to get the word out planning-wise, but many are responding. If there is nothing going on in your locale, you can make your own holy hour wherever you can find an open church with a tabernacle. For many of us in the United States, we will already be at a Sunday morning Mass. Of course you can always just pray along with the Pope in that hour, adoring Jesus in your heart.

For now, let’s see what we can do.

Bob and I are going to a noon Mass and we’re going to check into our little parish adoration chapel at 11am with whomever can make it.

Happy Corpus Christi!

Update: 2:30pm. So Bob and I went to the church for 11am to participate in the simultaneous holy hour, before our parish noon Mass. Our parish has an adoration chapel with about 2o seats in it. There were about 17 people in there including the pastor! We had to separate and sit apart because there were so few seats. This is a good thing.

photo: CNS photo/Paul Haring