The Most Reverend Jeffrey J. Walsh, bishop of the Diocese of Gaylord, encourages the faithful
in the Diocese of Gaylord to support the call for prayer and fasting on Tuesday, Oct. 17 for our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.
The Latin Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem has called for a day of prayer and fasting on Tuesday, Oct. 17 for peace and reconciliation in the Holy Land.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa has urged Catholics to organize times of prayer with Eucharistic adoration and recitation of the Rosary “to deliver to God the Father our thirst for peace, justice, and reconciliation.”
“In this time of sorrow and dismay, we do not want to remain helpless. We cannot let death and its sting (1 Cor 15:55) be the only word we hear,” he said in a statement issued on Oct. 11.
“That is why we feel the need to pray, to turn our hearts to God the Father. Only in this way we can draw the strength and serenity needed to endure these hard times, by turning to Him, in prayer and intercession, to implore and cry out to God amidst this anguish.”
Pizzaballa, who serves as the head of Latin Catholics living in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and Cyprus, acknowledged that the war may inhibit many Catholics in the Holy Land from organizing large gatherings and encouraged “simple and sober common moments of prayer in parishes, religious communities, and families.”
In response, Catholics from around the world have also pledged on social media to join in the fast for peace in the Holy Land in solidarity, which falls on the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, the first-century bishop and martyr from Syria.
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