Orate fratres

Orate fratres is the incipit of a request for prayer that the priest celebrating Mass of the Roman Rite addresses to the faithful participating in it before saying the Secret or Prayer over the Gifts. It thus corresponds to the Oremus said before the Collect and the Postcommunion, and is merely an expansion of that shorter exhortation. It has gone through several alterations since the Middle Ages.

The full text of the priest's exhortation is: Orate, fratres, ut meum ac vestrum sacrificium acceptabile fiat apud Deum Patrem omnipotentem (Pray, brethren (brothers and sisters), that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father).

This exhortation is a reminder to the people that the sacrifice being offered is not the priest's alone but theirs also ("my sacrifice and yours").

The words of the exhortation are the same as in the editio princeps of the Roman Missal issued by Pope Pius V in 1570. At a later stage, editions of the Tridentine Roman Missal introduced a rubric absent in the original, directing the priest to say the Orate fratres exhortation with his voice "raised a little" (voce paululum elevata), an indication that, unlike the Oremus, it was not to be sung, and a proof that it is not part of the old Roman Mass. This limitation was removed in the 1970 edition. When it was still the rule, Adrian Fortescue remarked: "Certainly nowhere is the whispered voice so anomalous as here, where we address the people. If the Orate fratres were an old integral part of the Mass, it would of course be sung loud."

A rubric that remains directs the priest to stand at the middle of the altar, facing the people, and to extend then join his hands, when making this request for prayer. This is the second occasion during the celebration of Mass on which the priest is directed to face the people in editions of the Roman Missal since 1970, the third in earlier editions. The more recent editions omit the indication given in earlier editions that, if celebrating ad orientem, the priest should, after turning to the people, on this occasion return to facing the altar by completing a clockwise 360° turn, unlike the other occasions, when according to the same editions, he was to turn back to the altar by reversing his turning to the people.

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