September 30, 2025
Dear Cathedral Parishioners,
Last week, our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, asked all Catholics throughout the world to pray a Rosary daily for peace in the world especially for the end of the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza and Israel. These wars have now been going on for years. There is always the potential of escalation drawing in other nations including the United States and perhaps the use of nuclear weapons that have far reaching consequences beyond the conflicts.
The choice of October is not perchance as well. October is the month that honors Our Lady of the Rosary (October 7th). This Feast was established when Pope Saint Pius V asked all Christians in Europe to pray on the eve of an invasion by Turkish troops. Although greatly outnumbered, the Christian troops were able to stave off the invaders. Also, in the vision of our Lady of Fatima, the Blessed Mother asked the three children in 1917 to pray for an end to the First War World. On October 13, 1917, the famous miracle of the sun took place which was a sign that the war would soon end. It did a year later on November 11, 1918.
In asking us to pray for peace, the Holy Father is reminding us that our duty as Christians is to work for peace and concord in this world so that the Gospel can easily be spread throughout the world. It is hard to know Christ where there is violence. Also, we cannot forget our fellow Christians. The Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox Christians have suffered greatly at the hands of the invasion these past three years, but they still have held on in the midst of everything. Likewise although not direct combatants in the conflict, the Israeli and Palestinian Christians are often the collateral between the warring parties. Cardinal Pizzaballa, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, has reported regularly of the dangers that the Christians in the region are undergoing.
In the end, you and I have been given an opportunity to pray for peace in our world in our own time. We can show this solidarity by reciting daily a Rosary with the intention for peace in our world.
Please join me in the private recitation of the Rosary for the Intention of Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, that there may be peace in the world and specifically for the end of the conflicts in Israel and Gaza and in Ukraine.
God Bless!
Father Ruben Buller