UGCC Patriarch urges to join in the prayer and fast for Lebanon

This was reported by the website of the Synod of Bishops of the UGCC.

During a general audience on Wednesday, September 2, His Holiness Francis called on all Catholics and representatives of other faiths and religions to experience the world day of prayer and fasting for Lebanon this Friday, September 4.

"Let's donate our prayer for all of Lebanon and Beirut. Let's show our proximity also through specific gestures of merciful love, as in other similar situations," the Bishop of Rome urged, also inviting representatives of other faiths and religions to join this initiative in their own way.

On this occasion, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Holy See, will visit the country in the name of the Pope.

Earlier, the Head of the UGCC expressed the spiritual solidarity of the UGCC with the Eastern Catholic churches of the region, all Christians and all the Lebanese people over the deadly explosion that took place in Beirut on August 5, 2020. A powerful blast in the capital's port claimed the lives of more than a hundred people and left about 300 thousand people homeless.

"Dear brothers and sisters, we stand beside you. We ask the Lord to ease your suffering, to embrace innocent victims, and to heal broken hearts with his infinite love! May our Lord, who overcame death by His death and Holy Resurrection, receive the souls of the dead and grant them eternal rest in His Kingdom. May the Lord grant his healing peace to the hearts of all those who lost loved ones in this tragedy. We embrace you in our prayer and solidarity in the eternal hope of resurrection," reads the letter of His Beatitude Sviatoslav to the four patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches in Lebanon.
Also, on August 14, 2020, the Head of the UGCC met in Kyiv with a Lebanese delegation headed by the Ukrainian Ambassador to Lebanon, during which they discussed a plan to help victims of the explosion in Beirut.