70. Great, also, and truly a measureless reason for hoping for the best is the immense chorus of prayers that the Church of Jesus Christ has offered up from all parts of the world to the divine Founder of the Church and to His blessed Mother for the Church's visible Head, the successor of Peter, just in the same way as was done twenty centuries ago, when persecution assailed Peter himself - the prayers of pastors and of flocks, of clergy and of faithful, of members of religious orders, of adult and of youths, and of children, prayers in the most exquisite and efficacious forms; of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and eucharistic communions; of supplications and of acts of adoration and reparation; of spontaneous immolations and of sufferings endured in a Christian manner; prayers of which the echo reached Us during all those days immediately following the sad events, and which brought Us great consolation, never so strong and so consoling as on this sacred and solemn day dedicated to the memory of the Princes of the Apostles, and on which day divine providence has disposed that We have been able to finish this encyclical letter.