Good Friday, April 22, will be a “Day of Prayer for the Victims of Violence” announced the secretary general of Colombia’s bishop’s conference.
Bishop Juan Vicente Cordoba said during an address to Colombia’s Congress that “The victims of this unfortunate phenomenon have been many, but most of them go unnoticed and are forgotten,” reported the Catholic News Agency.
Colombia is the country with the most people displaced by violence in the world according to a United Nations report from 2010, a result of over 45 years of internal armed conflict.
It is the church’s mission “to shed light on the victims’ sufferings and to demand that legal measures be taken to fully restore the rights that were violently taken from them,” said Bishop Cordoba.
His message to the perpetrators of Colombia’s violent past is to realize the gravity of their crimes, seek conversion and “carry out acts of reparation in support of the victims.”