Vatican City.- Pope Francis today implored the faithful “not to tire of praying for peace” and affirmed that the Ukrainian people are “every day in his heart.”
“Let us not get tired of praying for peace, especially for the Ukrainian people, who are in my heart every day,” said the Pontiff at the end of the Angelus prayer.on the occasion of the feast for the day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
The Argentine Pope also thanked the faithful from Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Poland, Italy and the United States who gathered in Saint Peter’s Square to accompany the archbishops appointed this year, who today received the blessing of the canopies during a mass celebrated inside the Basilica.
The traditional celebration for the day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, a local holiday in Rome, has coincided with the presence in Moscow of the special envoy for peace in the Ukrainian war, Matteo Zuppi, who will meet today with the Russian Patriarch, Cyril , the Russian Orthodox Church advanced.
In his homily, Francis invited us to “take the Lord Jesus everywhere, with humility and joy: in our city of Rome, in our families, in relationships and in neighborhoods, in civil society, in the Church, in the politics, throughout the world, especially where poverty, degradation and marginalization lurk.
Among the 5,000 attendees -according to the Holy See’s count- at the mass, was a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, whom the Pontiff greeted at the end of the homily and invited to “advance together” in fraternity.
Some twenty Ukrainian women, wives of their country’s ambassadors in different diplomatic missions, who met with the Pope the day before, also attended.
Francis presided over the Mass just two weeks after being discharged from a hernia operation in Rome.
In the liturgy, as tradition dictates, the Pope blessed in front of the tomb of Saint Peter the palliums that the new bishops will wear, a garment made up of white woolen stoles with six black or red silk crosses that are worn on the chest and shoulders.
