{"id":14159,"date":"2026-01-02T18:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T01:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pope-opens-2026-with-plea-for-peace-wounded-families\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:32:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:32:59","slug":"pope-opens-2026-with-plea-for-peace-wounded-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pope-opens-2026-with-plea-for-peace-wounded-families\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope opens 2026 with plea for peace, wounded families"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=897d5b4d-280c-56a7-9f10-b5f264598bd6&#038;function=cover&#038;type=preview&#038;source=false&#038;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Pope Leo XIV reads the homily as he celebrates Mass on New Year&#039;s Day, in St. Peter&#039;s Basilica at the Vatican on Jan. 1. (The Associated Press)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Pope Leo XIV reads the homily as he celebrates Mass on New Year&#039;s Day, in St. Peter&#039;s Basilica at the Vatican on Jan. 1. (The Associated Press)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Alessandra Tarantino<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>ROME (AP) \u2014 Pope Leo XIV opened 2026 on Thursday with a plea for peace, singling out in particular countries &#8220;bloodied by conflict&#8221; and families wounded by violence.<\/p>\n<p>Leo celebrated a New Year&#8217;s Day Mass in St. Peter&#8217;s Basilica and then delivered a special noontime prayer from his studio overlooking the piazza, which was full of pilgrims and tourists on the bright, chilly day.<\/p>\n<p>Leo noted that Jan. 1 marks the church&#8217;s World Day of Peace and used the occasion to issue a prayer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Let us all pray together for peace: first, among nations bloodied by conflict and suffering, but also within our homes, in families wounded by violence or pain,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>After a busy Christmas season, Leo has a few days of rest before he celebrates the church&#8217;s Epiphany holiday on Jan. 6. On that day too, he officially closes out the 2025 Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration that brought millions of pilgrims to Rome.<\/p>\n<p>Immediately thereafter, he is to preside over a two-day meeting of the entire College of Cardinals, the princes of the church who elected him pope, as well as those who are over age 80 and didn&#8217;t participate in the conclave but still remain part of the college. Leo is resurrecting a tradition largely eschewed by Pope Francis to convene cardinals every so often to seek their counsel on how to govern the 1.4 billion-strong Catholic Church.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leo XIV reads the homily as he celebrates Mass on New Year&#039;s Day, in St. Peter&#039;s Basilica at the Vatican on Jan. 1. (The Associated Press)Alessandra Tarantino ROME (AP) \u2014 Pope Leo XIV opened 2026 on Thursday with a plea for peace, singling out in particular countries &#8220;bloodied by conflict&#8221; and families wounded by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-14159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14159"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19359,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159\/revisions\/19359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14159"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=14159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}