Vatican City
Reuters
Pope Francis on Wednesday led a day of prayer for peace in Ukraine, calling for dialogue to prevail over partisan interests to resolve the West’s standoff with Russia.
Pope Francis looks on during the weekly general audience at the Vatican, on 26th January. PICTURE: Reuters/Remo Casilli.
Francis last Sunday called on people of all religious to pray on Wednesday for an end to the crisis, saying the tensions were threatening the security of Europe and risking vast repercussions.
“I ask you to pray for peace in Ukraine and to do it often in the course of the day,” Francis said at his weekly general audience, adding that he hoped “wounds, fears, and divisions” can be overcome.
As people prayed in Ukraine and elsewhere, Francis said he hoped the “supplications that today rise up to heaven touch the minds and hearts of world leaders, so that dialogue may prevail and the common good be placed ahead of partisan interests”.
Going off script, he recalled that more than five million people died in Ukraine during World War II and that people there had also suffered hunger and “so much cruelty”.
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This was an apparent reference to the estimated three to four million Ukrainians who died in the early 1930s when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin imposed the collectivisation of agriculture and other policies aimed at crushing Ukrainian nationalism.
The tragedy, which a number of countries have recognised as a form of genocide, is called the Holodomor and is also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine.
“They are a suffering people,” the Pope said of Ukrainians.
The Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, was to lead a prayer service in Rome on Wednesday evening organised by the Sant’ Egidio community, a Rome-based international charity that promotes peace.
Western leaders have stepped up military preparations and made plans to shield Europe from a potential energy supply shock if Russia invades Ukraine.
Top US and Russian diplomats failed on Friday to make a major breakthrough in talks to resolve the crisis, although they agreed to keep talking.
Earlier, the Pope said that parents of gay children should not condemn them but offer them support.
He spoke in unscripted comments at his weekly audience in reference to difficulties that parents can face in raising offspring.
Those issues included “parents who see different sexual orientations in their children and how to handle this, how to accompany their children, and not hide behind an attitude of condemnation,” Francis said.
He has previously said that gays have a right to be accepted by their families as children and siblings.
He has also said that while the church cannot accept same-sex marriage it can support civil union laws aimed at giving gay partners joint rights in areas of pensions and health care and inheritance issues.
Last year, the Vatican’s doctrinal office issued a document saying that Catholic priests cannot bless same-sex unions, a ruling that greatly disappointed gay Catholics.
In some countries, such as the United States and Germany, parishes and ministers had begun blessing same-sex unions in lieu of marriage, and there have been calls for bishops to de facto institutionalise these.
Conservatives in the 1.3 billion-member church have said the Pope – who has sent notes of appreciation to priests and nuns who minister to gay Catholics – is giving mixed signals on homosexuality, confusing some of the faithful.
Last month, a Vatican department apologised for “causing pain to the entire LGBTQ community” by removing from its website a link to resource material from a Catholic gay rights advocacy group in preparation for a Vatican meeting in 2023 on the church’s future direction.
The church teaches that gays should be treated with respect and that, while same-sex acts are sinful, same-sex tendencies are not.
