A litany is the Church at prayer in its most ancient form — the voice of the assembly calling upon God and His saints in rhythmic petition, each invocation answered by the congregation's faithful response.
Five approved litanies of the Catholic Church
Begin Praying ↓A litany is a form of prayer in which a leader offers a series of invocations or petitions, and the congregation responds with a fixed phrase — pray for us, Lord have mercy, deliver us O Lord. The word comes from the Greek litaneia, meaning supplication or entreaty.
Litanies are among the oldest forms of Christian prayer, rooted in the Jewish tradition of responsive psalmody. Psalm 136 — with its twenty-six repetitions of "for His mercy endures forever" — is the great Old Testament litany. By the fourth century they had become standard in the Roman liturgy; by the medieval period they had multiplied into scores of specialized forms.
The Church formally approves certain litanies for public recitation. Those presented here are among the most venerable and widely used in Catholic devotional life — from the solemn Litany of the Saints, sung at ordinations and the Easter Vigil, to the intimate Litany of Humility, prayed in the secret of the heart.
Each litany carries the Church's formal approval. They are not private compositions but the Church's own voice raised in supplication.