Pope Francis celebrates an ecumenical evening prayer service marking the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome Jan. 25, 2023. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

​BY CINDY WOODEN, CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

ROME (CNS) – God suffers and grieves when those who profess to believe in him do not love the people he loves and do not work for the justice he desires, Pope Francis said. “God suffers when we, who call ourselves his faithful ones, put our own ways of seeing things before his, when we follow the judgments of the world rather than those of heaven, when we are content with exterior rituals yet remain indifferent to those for whom he cares the most,” the pope said in his homily Jan. 25 at an ecumenical evening prayer service. Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant representatives joined the pope at Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls for vespers closing the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Members of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religions joined the mostly Rome-based religious leaders for the service. The Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches entrusted the preparations of the 2023 week of prayer to a group convened by the Minnesota Council of Churches. Acknowledging “the injustices perpetrated in the past against native peoples and in our own day against African Americans,” Pope Francis said, the group chose as the theme for the week “Do good; seek justice” from Isaiah 1:17. In the face of “various forms of contempt and racism, before indifference, lack of understanding and sacrilegious violence, the word of God admonishes us: ‘Learn to do good, seek justice,'” the pope said. “It is not enough to denounce, we need also to renounce evil, to pass from evil to good.”