At the conclusion of Sunday's midday prayer in the Vatican, Pope Francis, leader of the Catholic Church, called for an international day of "prayer for peace" in Ukraine. For such a day the pontiff proposed that next Wednesday, 26 January, according to Vatican News.
“I make a heartfelt appeal to all people of goodwill to raise prayers to Almighty God that all political actions and initiatives may be at the service of human brotherhood rather than partisan interests,” Pope Francis said according to Vatican News.
- Catholic Bishops of Ukraine and Poland appealed for dialog to avoid the danger of war.
- Meanwhile, several Ukrainian Greek Catholic Bishops in Canada express "closeness to people in Ukraine" and call for solidarity.
- Also, the Ukrainian Catholic Bishops of the United States joined the call to pray for peace in Ukraine.
- Additionally, Gintaras Grušas, the President of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences has expressed closeness to the Churches in Ukraine and to all its people, inviting the international community to offer its support to the country "in the face of the danger of a Russian military offensive."
In the past, Pope Francis expressed his concern over the situation in Ukraine on multiple occasions, encouraging that dialog and negotiation might prevail in resolving the crisis. The pontiff had even met with the Ukrainian military in the Vatican in 2017.
Read more:
- Pope Francis meets with Ukrainian servicemen in Vatican (2017)
- The Man and the Nation nobody expected: Andrei Sheptytskyi and Ukraine
- Kirill wants a ‘guarantee’ from Pope in his war against Church in Ukraine, Kholmogorov says
- Pope Francis and the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill: an epochal meeting with epochal consequences (2016)
- Why Putin fears the Ukrainian Catholic Church (2015)
- Are the Uniates about to make common cause with newly autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox?
