"Please...," the Pope sounded out for this Sunday's Angelus, July 14, from the window of the Apostolic Palace, "Please, let us not forget the tormented Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Myanmar". A plea to the faithful crowding the sunny St. Peter's Square, even before the plea to God and Our Lady to whom he entrusts these territories plagued by violence. Francis, at the end of the Angelus, recalls the liturgical feast of July 16, established to commemorate the 1251 apparitions of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel. He asks for her intercession, "Give comfort and obtain peace to all peoples who are oppressed by the horror of war". As in every Angelus or general audience, the Pope lists one by one the countries torn by the conflicts: Ukraine, where Russian raids, concentrated mainly in the regions of Kharkiv and Kherson, have killed civilians in recent days and caused numerous injuries, including children; the Holy Land, shaken by the recent, yet another massacre in Khan Yunis with 90 victims, many of them women and minors; Myanmar devastated, more than three years after the coup, by a bloody fight, but often overlooked by global public opinion.
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