Every year, on the second Sunday of July, Sea Sunday is celebrated. On this occasion, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Cardinal Michael Czerny SJ, has sent a message to chaplains and all volunteers involved in maritime pastoral care, encouraging them to be “prophets of peace.”
In this spirit, he called on “ecclesial communities, especially dioceses with maritime, river, or lake territories, to develop a focus on the Sea as both a physical and spiritual environment that calls for conversion.”
Cardinal Czerny also recalled the theme of the Jubilee 2025, centered on hope, and encouraged seafarers to be “pilgrims of hope,” because “whether consciously or not, they embody the desire of every human being, of whatever people or religious faith, to live a life of dignity, through work, exchange, encounters.”
You are pilgrims of hope every time you work with care and love; every time you keep alive the bonds with your families and your communities; every time that in the face of social and environmental injustice you organize yourselves to react and respond courageously and constructively,” he explained.