Lactantius

How about the name: Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (ca. 250-325). He was born and bred an atheist. The Roman Emperor Diocletian appointed him professor of Latin and rhetoric in a Greek city. Sometime late in his life, Lactantius became a Christian.  When Diocletian stepped up his persecution of Christians, Lactantius resigned and wrote a vigorous defense of Christianity. He condemned killing in the strongest manner possible. Nowhere in early Christian literature was there a more tenacious, absolute prohibition against murder. He began by decrying the killing at the gladiatorial games and kept right on going.  He condemned the killing of newborns. He condemned killing by suicide and called out Stoics for their complicit approval. He reasoned that since we don’t come into life of our own accord, neither is it our prerogative to take life, including our own. He condemned capital punishment and serving in the Roman army. Killing another human being whom God willed to be inviolable is always wrong. It doesn’t matter, he writes “If you kill with a sword or a word. It is always wrong to kill another human being.”
As the Ukraine war drags on and there seems no end in sight to mass shootings, Lactantius’ admonition is timely to ponder and pray. While I can find no written prayer of Lactantius, one of his contemporaries, Cyprian, prayed against violence and the coming of God’s reign of peace: