By Kristina Millare
Rome Newsroom, Mar 7, 2025 / 11:35 am
The Cook Islands, a nation in the Pacific Ocean, hosted this year’s ecumenical World Day of Prayer on March 7, bringing together hundreds of people from the country’s six Christian churches.
The World Day of Prayer International Community (WDPIC), formally established in 1968 and led by Christian women, has held prayer services in various countries — including the U.S., Hong Kong, and Brazil — since 1927. Since 1969, the World Day of Prayer has taken place on the first Friday of March.
The purpose of the WDPIC is to bring people together in prayer while addressing various spiritual and material needs of women and girls. To date, women from more than 180 countries are part of the network.
“Our first guiding principle in the World Day of Prayer articulates that our starting point is Christian women,” the WDPIC website states. “This has been an essential conviction of our movement over the last century.”
This year’s World Day of Prayer held in the Cook Islands reflected on the theme “I Made You Wonderful,” based on Psalm 139:14 — “I praise you for, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are your works! You know me right well.”
The March 7 event included storytelling, songs, and dances of praise, prayerful reflections, and testimonies of faith.
“I knew people who had died from COVID,” a 15-year-old girl shared at the service. “I was terrified and scared but I knew that prayer would help me to feel calm.”
“I stopped crying and the pressure lifted from my heart,” she continued.
