Pope prays for peace to extinguish strife in Middle East

By Christopher Wells

“I pray that the sincere search for peace will extinguish strife, love will overcome hatred, and revenge will be disarmed by forgiveness,” Pope Francis said at Wednesday’s General Audience.

Saying that he continues to follow the situation in the Middle East “with great concern,” the Holy Father repeated his appeals for an immediate ceasefire “on all fronts, beginning with Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is very serious”, and “unsustainable.”

Prayers for peace for Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan

In his first General Audience after the summer “pause” in July, Pope Francis also asked the faithful to join his prayers for the “war-torn peoples” of “martyred Ukraine, of Myanmar and Sudan.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or wounded, and millions of civilians have been displaced in Ukraine since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, which was followed by the conflict in Donbas and later the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022.

Civil war broke out in Myanmar in February 2021 after the Tatmadaw (the country's military) overthrew the democratically elected government. At least 50,000 people have died in the ensuing war, including 8,000 civilians, and around 2.3 million people have been displaced.

And in Sudan, a civil war between rival military factions has been ongoing since April 2023, with at least 13,000 to 15,000 people being killed and more than 33,000 wounded in the conflict. Some 7.7 million people have been internally displaced, and more than 2 million more have been fled the country.

“May these peoples, tried by war, soon find the greatly-desired peace,” he said.  

Appeal to end ethnic discrimination in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Pope Francis also called for renewed efforts and prayers “that ethnic discrimination in regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially discrimination against women, might be eliminated.”

Prior to the Audience, the Holy Father met with a small delegation representing the Afghan community in Italy.