To you, O Blessed Joseph

To you, O Blessed Joseph, we turn, tried by tribulation, and, trusting, we invoke your help and the help of your most Blessed Bride.
Because of that sacred bond of love, which bound you to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, and because of your paternal love for the Child Jesus, look lovingly, we pray you, on the beloved inheritance that Jesus Christ bought with His blood and, with your power and your help, succor us in our need.
Protect, O Providential Custodian of the Divine Family, the chosen fruits of Jesus Christ; keep us free, O most loving Father, of the plague of error and vices blackening the world; assist us with loving care from Heaven in this struggle against the power of darkness, O our most Powerful Protector; and as you once saved the threatened life of the Christ Child from death, so now defend the Holy Church of God from insidious hostilities and every adversity; and send to each one of us your help in every hour so that according to your example and by your help we may live virtuous lives, die in piety and receive eternal blessedness in Heaven. Amen.

This prayer was appended by Pope Leo XIII to the encyclical Quamquam pluries of 15 August 1889. Devotion to St Joseph, already declared patron of the universal Church by Blessed Pius IX on 8 December 1870, was particularly encouraged by Leo XIII who, elected Pope on 20 February 1878, set his pontificate from the very beginning "under the most powerful protection of St Joseph, the heavenly patron of the Church" (address to the Cardinals on 28 March 1878).