Pope Francis burst into tears in the middle of his prayers as he spoke about the war in Ukraine

The Pope francesco she wept Thursday as she prayed for peace in Ukraine during an annual Christmas visit to venerate a statue of the Virgin Mary near the Spanish Steps in central Rome.

Francisco leaned forward and his voice trailed off, unable to speak accurately as he reached the part of the sentence where he said: “Oh, Immaculate Virgin, today I wanted to thank you from the Ukrainian people…”.

When the thousands of dignitaries, clergymen and Roman citizens present realized that the Pope was overcome with emotion, they broke into applause and encouraged him to continue.

Then he resumed the thread of his speech, leaning on the arm of the chair but remaining standing.

“(Give you) the thanks of the Ukrainian people for the peace we have been asking the Lord for a long time”, he continued.

“Instead, I must present to you the supplication of children, of the elderly, of fathers, mothers and young people of this tormented land that suffers so much”, he continued with his voice still distorted by emotion.

The episode took place during the pontiff’s annual visit to the Plaza de España, which falls on December 8, the feast dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The event marks the unofficial start of the Christmas period in Italy.

Meanwhile, in his public prayer of the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square, the Pope had already evoked “the universal desire for peace, above all for the tormented Ukraine which suffers so much”.

Dad tirelessly advocates for peace since the beginning of the Russian invasion, a theme he regularly mentions in his speeches.

In an interview published in late November by the American Jesuit magazine America, the Pope denounced the “cruelty” that Ukraine is facing in the face of the Russian offensive.

Kyiv prepares for a Christmas at war

A Christmas without lights, with trees and mangers only in homes, in those where at least they are willing to put them together. No decorations or lights on the porches. In Ukraine, a party emerges in the dark and in the midst of the bitter cold.

“This year our Christmas will be very different from last yearbut It’s not our first Christmas in the war. Many in the world forget that families went through the same thing eight years ago (Crimean War, NDR). Ukrainian women experience this suffering”, said the Latin-rite Catholic bishop of Kyiv, Monsignor Vitalii Kryvytskyi.

He said this from his residence a few meters from the Maidan and next to the Cathedral of Sant’Alessandro, which at the time of the communist regime had been transformed into a planetarium and, perhaps somewhat due to its disfigurement, into a museum of atheism.

Then he spoke of the issues he has faced in recent days with the other bishops in the preparation of the Christmas masses.

“We decided don’t talk about forgiveness this is not the right time to do it. Should we offer forgiveness to a woman who has been raped? A mother who saw her son murdered? It won’t be like this, least of all at the holiday table. Who do we have to give our forgiveness to: who has never asked for it?”, she said.

“We can start talking about forgiveness, if we want to give value to this word and not make a caricature of it, only when the war is over”. added the bishop.

The bishop, in front of a group of journalists after a mission by the Ukrainian and Polish embassies to the Holy See, also announced that the Council of Churches of Ukraine, where Orthodox, Catholics but also Jews and Muslims live together, he asked the Holy See to meet in the Vatican to pray together for peace.

“We hope it can be held in January”, he added, explaining that the organization of this event is in the hands of the nunciature of Kyiv.

With information from agencies

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