Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas have called for peace at an unprecedented prayer with Pope Francis at the Vatican amid heightened tensions between the two sides. The Pope also invited Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians.
Peres said that peacemaking was a “duty” and a “holy mission” at the spiritual event in the Vatican Gardens, and Abbas called for a “comprehensive and just peace” that could bring stability to the Middle East.
The four leaders then symbolically shoveled soil for a newly-planted olive tree and held a closed-door meeting in a Vatican pavilion, following the collapse of US-backed Middle East peace talks earlier this year.
3 comments
Very good reporting Mr. Pappas. Consistently you bring us quality reports with balance views and fairness to every side. I thoroughly enjoy your posts. Keep up the good work. Peace in the Middle East is of paramount importance to world peace and where the politicians failed the religious leaders of the two largest Christian churches, with their moral authority and historic importance to Christendom should exert every effort to bring about an acceptable peace agreement to both sides that will put an end to this troubling problem to the Israelis and the Palestinians. Both of them need peace to use their energies and resources for the good of their people and peace to the region. Let's hope God blesses thier efforts and bring peace that is so much needed to the birth place of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
ευλογειτε……
Why is this event being written about in a positive manner? Praying with heretics is an offence that calls for automatic excommunication from the church. Those aren’t my words, nor the words of the Globalist authoritarians currently run our institutions, they are the words of those who built the Greek Orthodox Church (the only true church of God). I guess selling out is considered innovation in our modern crumbling society.