As a crusader of the "Crusade of Mercy", you may be wondering how you can participate and what this Crusade is all about.

The "Crusade of Mercy" has no limitation of time. It does not end with time or prayers said. Its focus is to release as many souls from Purgatory as quickly and as continuosly as possible. The Poor Souls suffer all year round, and so we want to do what we can for them throughout the whole year.

But we will still set certain goals for ourselves - to give us an encouraging motivation and focus.

In the past, at the end of my crusades, I liked to reward the participating crusaders with small gifts as tokens of my gratitude and the gratitude of the Poor Souls.

And so, as we continue to say prayers throughout the year for the suffering souls in Purgatory, I will give a Grand Prize whenever we have said 25,000 prayers.

This prize will be given to all the crusaders who have helped by saying at least 50 of those 25,000 prayers. But remember! This prize does not signify the end of the Crusade - we will keep praying! And when we have offered another 25,000 prayers, then those participating crusaders will receive another prize.

In between these larger goals though, there are smaller objectives for the crusaders. You will now notice that - for every 5,000 prayers that are said, we will unlock what is called 'Crusader Tokens.' These are little prizes that can be enjoyed at smaller steps throughout the Crusade to help encourage our crusaders. They are tokens of gratitude for all of the crusaders' progress.

So again, our goal is to help the Poor Souls all year round. But along the way we have the objective of saying 25,000 prayers for the Poor Souls in Purgatory as frequently as possible. And on our way to reaching those larger goals, remember that with every 5,000 prayers said we will unlock Crusader Tokens. Remember that, while there are no time restrictions, we do want to help the dear Church Suffering as quickly as we can!

To the degree that you are generous is the degree that God can be generous towards you. And, in reality, God will not repay your sacrifices and prayers equally, one to one, but a hundred times more!

And how can you help get souls out of Purgatory? There are many ways and, in fact, no limit to the kinds of prayers, sacrifices and good works that you can offer on their behalf. The most powerful of these is, without question, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, since it is the Sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary. Try to have priests offer the Mass with the specific intention of helping the Poor Souls in Purgatory.

Jesus, in His mercy to both us and the Poor Souls, has given us a number of easy ways to help them. One of these is a prayer that Jesus Himself gave to St. Gertrude the Great. Although it is not as powerful as the Mass, it is very effective and easier to say more often. With this beautiful prayer, He attached powerful graces. One day, Jesus showed St. Gertrude that, because of this prayer which she would pray often during the day, a vast number of souls were released from Purgatory!

This is quite an extraordinary and powerful prayer! One that this Crusade plans to make great use of. As it has been recorded, St. Getrude saw a vast number of souls aided by this single prayer. She could not count them all! In fact, this is why we are focusing on the number of prayers that we pray, instead of the number of souls that we have helped. The power of our prayers lies in the confidence and effort with which we pray them. If we do not pray well, we cannot expect God to release a certain fixed number of Poor Souls from Purgatory. And if we pray with great confidence, we cannot, and indeed should not, put any limit on His generousity and mercy!

Jesus told St. Mechtilde (who was actually a nun in the same convent with St. Gertrude): "It is a great joy to Me that men expect great gifts from Me... Therefore it is good for a man to hope much in Me, and to place in Me all his confidence."