Priests in Guam led prayers for peace amid ongoing fears that their tiny Pacific island could come under fire from North Korean ballistic missiles over the next few days.
The call to prayer came ahead of what promises to be another tense week in the US territory, whose 162,000 inhabitants have been on tenterhooks since Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator, said he was mulling plans to fire four Hwasong-12 missiles within 40km of their coastline by mid-August.
Michael Byrnes, a Guam Archbishop, urged leaders of the island's 26 churches to "offer prayers for peace between our nations, just resolution of differences, and prudence in both speech and action," reflecting international pleas for Donald Trump, the US President, to tone down his bellicose rhetoric.
He also asked for prayers for "diligence and courage" for the men and women working on the Andersen Air Force base and the Naval Base Guam, where thousands of US military personnel are deployed to defend American interests in the western Pacific.
About 85 per cent of Guam's population claim an affiliation to Roman Catholicism, making it the main religion of the former Spanish colony, which was conquered by the US in 1898.