Mater Dolorosa.

What this is

Mater Dolorosa means the sorrowful Mother. She is Our Lady standing at the Cross, the woman Simeon told that a sword would pierce her soul. This page is for a woman who has come to her own Calvary: a baby lost before birth or soon after, a son or daughter who has died, a child who has walked away from the faith, a long and painful wait for a child, the weight of an abortion, the dark after giving birth, the death of her husband or of someone else she loves, or a marriage in danger.

Choose where you are. Each path walks the same five steps: name what is happening; hear the Word of God in the Douay-Rheims; take the next step toward the sacraments; do one thing in the next fifteen minutes; and come back to today. Under each path you will find what the Church actually teaches about it, in plain words, with the source of every line, and the people to call, from your parish priest to the national lines, each checked on its own official site.

How to use it

You do not have to read everything. Open the path closest to where you are, and stop wherever you need to. The prayers of Our Lady of Sorrows are always one tap away: the Stabat Mater in Latin and in Edward Caswall’s English of 1849, and the Seven Sorrows as the Raccolta of 1910 gives them, with beads you can tap to keep your place. If you wish, you can keep the names and days of those you have lost; each day comes round with you every year, and you can print a small remembrance card.

Nothing here keeps score. There are no streaks and no counts. The names you choose to keep and your parish’s phone number stay on your own device (and in your encrypted sync, only if you turn sync on); which path you open is never recorded. Read how Regina handles your data, or export or delete it.

What the Church hopes for children who die before Baptism

Mothers have sometimes been told hard things here as if they were certain. They are not. The Catechism says:

“As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,’ allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1261)

The International Theological Commission’s study of 2007, published with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI (a theological study, not itself a teaching of the Church), found theological and liturgical reasons for that hope while noting that Revelation gives no explicit teaching on it. In its own words, these are “reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge.” So we say what the Church says: we hope, and we entrust these children to the mercy of God. We do not say less than she does, and we do not promise more.

The Church also teaches that the body of a child who dies before birth is to be respected as the remains of any other human being, and Church law lets the diocese permit a Church funeral for a child whose parents intended to have the child baptized. Do not decide on your own that your baby cannot have one: ask your parish priest; he will know what to do. For a longer reading, see For the Grieving Mother in the library.

Sources

• Catechism of the Catholic Church 958, 1032, 1256, 1257, 1261, 1263, 1438, 2181, 2270, 2282, 2283, 2288, 2300, 2374–2379, 2383, read on vatican.va.
• Code of Canon Law, canons 871, 901, 1153 and 1183 (vatican.va).
• International Theological Commission, The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised (2007).
• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Vitae (1987), I.4 and II.B.5.
• St John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 99 (1995) and Mulieris Dignitatem 19 and 21 (1988); U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, When I Call for Help (2002); Pope Francis, Misericordia et misera 12 (2016).
• Holy Scripture in the Douay-Rheims (Challoner) translation, from drbo.org.
• Stabat Mater: Latin from the Missale Romanum (1889); English by Edward Caswall, Lyra Catholica (1849). Both public domain.
• The Seven Sorrows: The Raccolta (1910), no. 230; Eternal rest: nos. 404 and 406; the Act of Spiritual Communion of St Alphonsus Liguori: no. 104. Public domain.
• St Augustine, Confessions, Book III, tr. E. B. Pusey; St Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, ch. IV, tr. T. N. Taylor (1912); Baltimore Catechism No. 2, as printed in Kinkead (1891), with Kinkead’s explanation of Q. 148 on conditional sacraments. All public domain, read on Project Gutenberg.
• Help lines: each read on its own official site on October 10, 2026; the date and the site are shown beside every number.

This page is pastoral, not medical or legal advice. For grief that will not lift, a good priest and a good doctor or counselor are both gifts of God.

Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America Copyright © 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with Permission. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright © 1997, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops—Libreria Editrice Vaticana.