The first World Day of Prayer for the preservation of the environment was recently celebrated at Ta’ Qali National Park.

It will be about as effective as Pope John Paul’s prayers at Assisi in 1986 for peace in the Middle East; as ineffectual as Pope Francis’ prayers on Easter Sunday in 2013 for peace in Syria; and as unsuccessful as the Pope's prayer meeting in 2014 with the Israeli and Palestinian presidents, followed a month later by a brutal and destructive war between Israel and Hamas.

Despite all the prayers by the Vicars of Christ, the situation in the Middle East has deteriorated from very tense in 1986 to catastrophic in 2015.

These last three decades have witnessed an escalation of terrorism, violence and war in the Middle East, and the alarming rise of al-Qaeda, Al-Shabab, Boko Haram and Islamic State – all of which provides more than enough evidence that all the persistent prayers in the world, over the last 30 years, did not bring about the much-needed peace.

 

John Guillaumier

St Julian's