History
This prayer, whose opening words are similar to the Alleluia verse for Saint Michael’s feasts on 8 May and 29 September in the Roman Missal of the time (which ran, "Sancte Michael, defende nos in proelio ut non pereamus in tremendo iudicio"), was added in 1886 to the Leonine Prayers that in 1884 Pope Leo XIII ordered to be said after Low Mass, for the intention of obtaining a satisfactory solution to the problem that the loss of the Pope's temporal sovereignty caused in depriving him of the evident independence required for effective use of his spiritual authority.
This problem was resolved in 1929 by the creation of the State of Vatican City, and in the following year, Pope Pius XI ordered that the intention for which these prayers should from then on be offered was "to permit tranquillity and freedom to profess the faith to be restored to the afflicted people of Russia".
The Leonine Prayers were officially suppressed by the 26 September 1964 Instruction Inter Oecumenici, 48 j which came into effect on 7 March 1965.
The opening words of the prayer ("St. Michael, defend us in battle") are sometimes used as an independent prayer, a short invocation, not as a fragment of the longer prayer.
Read more about this topic: Prayer To Saint Michael
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