| Bishop to join vigil for Mid-East peace BY LINDA WORTHINGTON UMCONnection Staff As the crisis of violence deepens in the Middle East, religious leaders from the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities are gathering for a prayer vigil May 5, and inviting all people of faith to join them at the Washington National Cathedral at 7:30 p.m. The prayer vigil is one response to the terrible crisis afflicting the Middle East at this time, said the Right Rev. Allen L. Bartlett Jr., assisting bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, whose Middle East Peace Committee is sponsoring the event. A similar observance will be held at the same time in St. Georges Cathedral in Jerusalem. The Baltimore-Washington Conference is a co-sponsor of the event. Bishop Felton Edwin May will be participating along with leading Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious leaders, said Jim Vitarello, an organizer for the event and member of Foundry UMC. Bishop May has been invited to give the closing prayer. The situation there is horrific and we must do everything we can do here to prevent a broader regional war and immediately stop the violence on both sides, Vitarello said. Bishop May and the Rev. Philip Wogaman, Foundry UMCs senior pastor, were among 11 religious leaders who endorsed the Alexandria Declaration on March 27. That document is the result of a collaborative agreement between Jewish, Islamic and Christian religious and government leaders who adopted the declaration calling for a religiously sanctioned ceasefire, respected and observed on all sides, on Jan. 21 at an interfaith summit in Alexandria, Egypt. The National Cathedral is at Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenues, N.W., Washington, D.C. | 
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