Pope Leo XIV called Sunday for an end to the "pandemic of arms" as he prayed for "countless" children killed by firearms and in conflicts globally, reports AFP.

The US pontiff repeated his calls at the end of the Angelus prayer for a ceasefire in Ukraine following a Russian attack on Kyiv on Thursday in which at least 25 people died, including four children.

He also noted the recent shooting during a school mass in Minnesota in the United States, in which two children were killed.

"We include in our prayers the countless children killed and injured every day around the world. Let us plead God to stop the pandemic of arms, large and small, which infects our world," he said in English.

On Ukraine, the pope said he urged the world "not to give in to indifference" and renewed his "insistent call for an immediate ceasefire and for a serious commitment to dialogue".

"It is time for those responsible to renounce the logic of arms and embark on the path of negotiation and peace, with the support of the international community," he said.

MSH

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).