(RNS) — Before the last conclave, Ulrike Heckl found herself looking at photos of the cardinals who were preparing to elect the next pope and wondering at the enormity of the responsibility on their shoulders. In that moment, she had a simple thought: “They need prayers.”
A friend of Heckl’s was leading YOUTH 2000 Germany, a Catholic initiative focused on retreats, adoration, pilgrimages and other spiritual activities for young people. And together they created Adopt a Cardinal, a site where people around the world could come and be randomly assigned to pray for one of the cardinals at the 2013 conclave.
In Athens, Georgia, Anne Marie Vencill read about the website and found the idea appealing. “We’re so removed from what happens with the universal church here,” she explained in a phone interview. “When something like the conclave happens, you can read all about it on social media, but how do you as an individual engage?”
Vencill told her friend Ellen Ritchey about the site, and the two of them signed up. “I thought, ‘That sounds kind of interesting,’” Ritchey agreed with Vencill that it was “a way to be a little more engaged with everything going on.”
Both were assigned cardinals from other parts of the world, men they had never heard of. While Vencill did …