Around 600 Christian students from 14 schools came together last week in Jerusalem to pray together for peace and retrace the Stations of the Cross in an event entitled “Let us walk together in the footsteps of Jesus.”
The students were accompanied by teachers and administrative staff who carried the cross along the Way of the Cross.
The students were emulating the call by Pope Francis during his recent visit to Malta, where he said, “Let us now pray for peace, thinking of the humanitarian tragedy of the martyred Ukraine, still under the bombardment of this sacrilegious war.”
This was the first time that the students prayed together for the end of the war and “that there will be peace in the whole world and in our country, especially in Jerusalem,” according to Ibrahim Faltas, general director of the Terra Sancta Schools. “Without peace in Jerusalem, there can be no peace in the world.”
Said Tia Maria Armizian of School Sisters of the Rosary, “We’ve been experiencing a lot of tensions lately - I hope everyone lives in peace."
She was referring to recent terror attacks in Israel. In the last two months, 14 people have been killed.
This was the first large group walk since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Faltas remembered how on Good Friday in 2020 there were only four friars who took the walk.
“Now we see this large number of faithful on the streets of Jerusalem, we have returned to normal life and now everyone wishes to retrace the Way of the Cross,” Faltas said. “I hope God hears our pleas and the prayers of these little ones."