(PresidentialInsider.com)- On Sunday, Pope Francis condemned the ongoing war in Ukraine and called on all Catholics to pray the rosary for peace every day during the month of May.
In his Sunday message at the Vatican, the pope reminded the 30,000 pilgrims in attendance that the month of May is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and urged them to pray the rosary every day for an end to aggression.
The pope offered his thoughts to people in the city of Mariupol, calling it “Mary’s city.” He once again asked that “safe humanitarian corridors” be set up for those “trapped in the steelworks in that city.”
In reflecting on the suffering of the Ukrainian people, especially the elderly and young, the pope said “I suffer and weep.”
Of the Russian assault, Francis described it as a “macabre regression of humanity” that makes him wonder if “peace is truly being sought.” He asked if there is the will “to avoid a continued military and verbal escalation” and if everything was being done “to silence the weapons.”
He urged the pilgrims now to “surrender to the logic of violence” or the “perverse spiral of weapons” and asked that a “path of dialogue and peace be taken.”
At the same time the pope was praying for dialogue and peace, a delegation of Democrat lawmakers led by the devout Catholic Speaker Nancy Pelosi was meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv to let him know that the United States would remain in the fight until Russia is defeated.
Rather than avoiding “a continued military and verbal escalation,” Pelosi used her greeting with Zelensky to declare that Ukraine’s fight “is a fight for everyone” and the United States was committed “to be there for you until the fight is done.”
