India News

By Felix Anthony

Miao, 11 March : In the wake of airstrikes hitting a kindergarten in Dnipro city of Ukraine on 10 March 2022, Bishop George Pallipparambil of Miao diocese in Arunachal Pradesh has appealed to the children to pray for their counterpart in war-torn Ukraine.

In a note addressed to all in the north easternmost corner of India, the Bishop has expressed deep sadness by the loss of lives of civilians, children and women in the ‘midst of the painful happenings in Ukraine’.

“What we are seeing and reading leaves us with a lump in our throat. Words fail us to express our pain and anguish. I suggest that we continue our prayer. I also appeal to all our children in the diocese to pray the ‘Our Father' prayer as many times as possible for the suffering children and families. Let us target a minimum of one million. The 'Our Father' prayer has the greatest need of today, "give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us as we forgive", the note read.

He further invited all in the diocese to express their solidarity, ‘by sparing something for these people who have lost everything and will be homeless for a long time’.

The women in the diocese also prayed for their Ukrainian counterpart on Tuesday on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

In the meantime, no breakthrough came from the highest-level Ukraine-Russia meeting on Thursday. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov reached no significant agreement in Antalya, Turkey, in the countries' first cabinet-level meeting since the start of the invasion on Feb. 24.