There are few prayers in common Catholic use which sound more “ancient” than the Prayer to St Michael, which uses phrases such as “defend us in battle”, “wickedness and snares of the devil”, “Prince of the heavenly host”. It seems to belong naturally to the world of crusaders, gargoyles and medieval churches – in fact, it is younger than the telephone.
The prayer was composed by Pope Leo XIII and added in 1886 to the prayers then said after every Low Mass. Those prayers themselves had a political origin: Pius IX had introduced a version of them in the Papal States in 1859, when the temporal power of the papacy was under threat during Italian unification. Leo XIII extended them to the whole Church in 1884, asking Catholics to pray for the liberty and exaltation of Holy Mother Church. Two years later, the prayer to St Michael was added.
