Why Do Catholics Bow and Pray before Statues?

When Catholics kneel before the statue of a saint, they are not worshipping the person depicted, let alone the stone or plaster image as such. Catholics don’t pray to images; they pray through them to the holy persons who are depicted. Sacred images help the faithful focus their minds and hearts when asking for a particular saint’s intercession. In other words, these images are instruments of prayer, not objects of prayer in the strict sense. The same would hold if the statue were an image of Jesus, our divine Savior.

For more information on this subject, please see our tract “Do Catholics Worship Statues?”