Churches Join Global Prayer Day for Peace in the Holy Land

[Israeli] soldiers are positioned outside kibbutz Beeri near the border with the Gaza Strip.  (AFP or licensors

Churches across the world join a Day of Prayer and Fasting for peace in the Holy Land Day amid threats of further escalation.

By Vatican News staff writer

As war between [Israel] and Hamas rages on, and the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip worsens, Christians across the world are heeding a call to pray for peace in the Holy Land.

The Church leaders of the Holy Land's call for a day of prayer

Writing to the world’s faithful as President of the Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land (ACOHL), in a letter last week His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, asked that on Tuesday, October 17, everyone hold a day of fasting, abstinence, and prayer for peace and reconciliation in the battered region.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem particularly urged “prayer times with Eucharistic adoration and with the recitation of the Rosary to Our Blessed Virgin Mary.” “This is the way we all come together despite everything, and unite collectively in prayer, to deliver to God the Father our thirst for peace, justice and reconciliation,” he said. 

In a following statement, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem also urged their respective congregations and all those of goodwill to join in prayer and fasting for peace and “in support of all those who have suffered in this war and of the families reeling from the violence”…

This news was originally published on the website of Vatican News. Please click here to read the full text and listen to the report.