People cannot call themselves Christians if they sow the seeds of war, Pope Francis said.

Hope is the virtue needed to approach the coming year, especially when the looming threat of war surrounds a humanity scarred by violence, Pope Francis said.

Hours after Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement calling for urgent prayers “that our world’s leaders will pursue dialogue and seek peace.”

Saying that “there is no end in sight to the horror which confronts us,” Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, said the bishops have implemented a national response to months of wildfires.

Pope Francis led pilgrims in prayers for peace as tensions between the United States and Iran escalated following the assassination of a top Iranian general.

As some of the worst wildfires in Australian history rage across four states, thousands of people in affected areas in New South Wales and Victoria continue to be evacuated to safety.

Iraqis fear their country, already weary from years of war, may be dragged into a conflict between the United States and Iran, following the U.S.-targeted killing in Baghdad of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani.

Decrying the acts of religious violence that have taken place during the Christmas season, the president of the U.S. bishops declared: “Violence in the name of God is blasphemy.”

The March for Life, the annual march in Washington to protest legalized abortion in the United States, is tying itself in 2020 to the women’s suffrage movement for the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Pope Francis announced Dec. 8 that he has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Edwin F. O’Brien as Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.