This does come off a lot like "Let's all ask God to do the important and urgent things I chose not to do."

As Dale Carnegie says, prayer is what we try after we've exhausted every practical option. If God exists, they clearly want us to do our best with available options before begging them to solve our problems.

(Side note: if God exists, they have a lot to answer for, and there's non-trivial evidence that they might be a raging asshole. Maybe a stupid choice of ally in the tough times ahead.)

CEOs have a lot of practical options. I don't know if Pat exhausted those options, but it's hard to give any CEO the benefit of the doubt after the last decade of pervasive "line must go up regardless of the obvious short, medium and long term consequences for absolutely everyone concerned."

So pardon me if I'm not impressed with trying to pray away those consequences.