Synod participants who have known war and conflict firsthand led the assembly of the Synod of Bishops yesterday by praying for peace between Israel and Palestine, throughout the Middle East and across the globe. Source: CNS.
Iraqi Sister Caroline Saheed Jarjis, a member of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, read in Arabic the day’s Gospel passage from Luke, which included the line: “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Margaret Karram, a Palestinian born in Israel, who is president of the Focolare movement, read prayers of petition for “the Holy Land; for the people of Israel and Palestine, who are in the grip of unprecedented violence; for the victims, especially the children; for the injured; for those being held hostage; for the missing and their families”.
“In these hours of anguish,” she said, members of the Synod unite with Pope Francis in praying for peace in every nation of the Middle East and in every country at war.
Cardinal Louis Sako, the Iraq-based patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, presided over the prayer service and asked God to act so that “all humanity, which has in you alone its origin, would form one family without violence, without absurd war”.
After the morning session, Ms Karram and Sr Jarjis met with reporters at the Synod’s daily briefing. They were joined by Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Bamenda, president of the bishops’ conference of Cameroon, a nation experiencing violence since 2016 between government forces and militants demanding the independence of the country’s English-speaking regions.
Archbishop Fuanya told reporters, “This Synod is a very big consolation to Africa because with the problems we have in Africa, sometimes we feel isolated and abandoned. But coming to the Synod, we join with the rest of the universal Church to sit down and pray together for the problems that are going on in Africa, and especially for the countries that are affected by war.”
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Synod members from around the globe unite in praying for peace (CNS via USCCB)
