Pope Benedict XVI said at the June 1 general audience that intercessory prayer helps us to grow in deeper knowledge of God and his mercy and makes us more capable of loving others in a ...

Studying the efficacy of prayer is a sensitive topic: Depending on where you come from, you can either consider it offensive even to try to apply a scientific method to a spiritual process, or you can ...

Some questions just will not die. “Why is there something instead of nothing?” is a perennial. Perhaps the second-most persistent question is this: “Is yawning contagious?” or “Why is yawning ...

Health and religion have always been intertwined, most obviously through prayer on behalf of the sick. Does intercessory prayer for sick people actually help heal them? For thousands of years some ...

David Teniers the Younger, “Abraham’s Sacrifice,” 1653 (Credit: Public Domain.) Listen No explanation on intercession would be complete without a mention of our spiritual father, the great Abraham of ...

A LOT of studies on intercessory prayer have been published in recent years. This research has returned mixed results. Some studies conclude that prayer improves health, while others show no effect—or ...