Cook Islands hosts ecumenical World Day of Prayer

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. “And then I realized that God knows every detail of my life.”

“Knowing that God knows and cares about me helps me to feel calm when I am afraid,” she said. “God knows me, and God knows you, and God knows everything that we are going through.”   

More than 200 women, men, and children — belonging to the Cook Islands Christian Church, Assemblies of God Church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventist Church, Apostolic Church, and the Roman Catholic Church — gathered inside the country’s National Auditorium in Rarotonga for the prayer service.

In preparation for the March 7 service, Bishop Reynaldo Getalado, MSP, of Rarotonga celebrated a special Feb. 9 Mass dedicated to the Catholic women and their families involved in the international World Day of Prayer.

Last month, women of different Christian faiths gathered in the Diocese of Rarotonga’s St. Joseph’s Cathedral to practice the World Day of Prayer theme song, “Wonderfully Made,” composed by Cook Islands woman Ruru Maeva.

“Nothing stood in the way because God was in the lead,” the Diocese of Rarotonga posted on Facebook. “Thank you to all our women who came together tonight and sang from their hearts our song of praise to our God.”

Several Christian groups in the Cook Islands and abroad watched the World Day of Prayer event livestreamed on Facebook, while other Christian groups hosted their own events in conjunction with the WDPIC event.