Pope Francis sits with refugee children from Syria at the Vatican Aug. 11. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)
OFFICE FOR SOCIAL MINISTRY
“Peace is a profound aspiration for everyone, for each individual and all peoples, and especially for those who most keenly suffer its absence. In order to find that peace, they are willing to risk their lives on a journey that is often long and perilous, to endure hardships and suffering, and to encounter fences and walls built to keep them far from their goal.” (Pope Francis, 2018 Message for World Day of Peace: “Migrants and Refugees: Men and Women in Search of Peace”)
As we mark the beginning of the new year, we pray for Bishop Larry Silva and his ad limina visit with Pope Francis in Rome and for the pope’s new year prayer intentions. This year, the pope’s prayer intentions for the first two months of the year are intentionally connected. For January, Pope Francis is asking all to pray for the promotion of world peace. (“We pray that Christians, followers of other religions, and all people of goodwill may promote peace and justice in the world.”) And for February, the Holy Father asks all in their prayers to listen to the migrants’ cries (“We pray that the cries of our migrant brothers and sisters, victims of criminal trafficking, may be heard and considered.”)
Connecting prayers for peace and prayers for migrants is not new for Pope Francis. In August 2017, he wrote: “Throughout the first years of my pontificate, I have repeatedly expressed my particular concern for the lamentable situation of many migrants and refugees fleeing from war, persecution, natural disasters and poverty.”
His 2018 New Year’s Day message repeated Saint John Paul II’s reflections on war and migrants: “Displaced persons are one of the consequences of the ‘endless and horrifying sequence of wars, conflicts, genocides and ethnic cleansings’ that had characterized the 20th century. To this date, the new century has registered no real breakthrough: armed conflicts and other forms of organized violence continue to trigger the movement of peoples within national borders and beyond.”
In his 2020 New Year’s Day Message, our Holy Father emphasized the need for welcoming people of different cultures, saying: “War, as we know, often begins with the inability to accept the diversity of others, which then fosters attitudes of aggrandizement and domination born of selfishness and pride, hatred and the desire to caricature, exclude and even destroy the other. War is fueled by abuses of power, by fear of others and by seeing diversity as an obstacle. And these, in turn, are aggravated by the experience of war.”
In a recent January general audience address, the pope compared the early apostles to today’s migrants from war. “Today, the sea on which Paul and his companions were shipwrecked is, once again, a dangerous place for the lives of other sailors. All over the world migrant men and women face risky voyages to escape violence, to escape war, to escape poverty.”
All these powerful quotes from Pope Francis echo his own personal experiences of visiting and talking story with those in refugee camps and resettlement centers around the world. This is why he chose these two themes —“promotion of world peace” and “listen to the cries of migrants” — as his first two monthly prayer intentions for 2020. These prayers are shared through the pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, also known as the Apostleship of Prayer, an organization that works to encourage Christians to respond to the pope’s specific monthly prayer appeals.
To find more about the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, visit the website www.popesprayerusa.net. Let us pray and work for peace and the openness of heart to hear the cries of the poor in 2020.
Mahalo,
Your friends at the Office for Social Ministry
