ROME — Pope Francis again condemned the war on Ukraine Sunday, calling for Catholics to pray the rosary for peace every day during the month of May.
Noting that May is the month dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the pontiff urged the 30,000 pilgrims gathered in the Vatican for his weekly Regina Caeli address to pray the rosary every day for an end to aggressions.
“My thought goes to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, ‘Mary’s city,’ barbarically bombed and destroyed,” he said. “Once again, from here, I renew my request that safe humanitarian corridors be arranged for the people trapped in the steelworks in that city.”
“I suffer and weep, thinking of the sufferings of the Ukrainian people, and in particular, the weakest, the elderly and children,” he declares. “There are even terrible reports of children being expelled and deported.”
The Russian assault on Ukraine represents a “macabre regression of humanity,” Francis said, and makes him wonder whether “peace is truly being sought,” “whether there is the will to avoid a continued military and verbal escalation,” and “whether everything possible is being done to silence the weapons.”
“I beg you, let us not surrender to the logic of violence, to the perverse spiral of weapons. May the path of dialogue and peace be taken!” he concluded.
As Breitbart News reported, U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi arrived in Kyiv Saturday, where she met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to deliver a message of American solidarity.
Zelensky has previously pleaded with Biden to personally visit the capital city to show he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine as it struggles through its eighth year of war and colonization by neighboring Russia.
“Our delegation traveled to Kyiv to send an unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine,” Pelosi said in a statement.