Colombia's second-largest left wing terrorist group, the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional), has reached out to the Catholic Church for help mediating with President Juan Manuel Santos.

On Monday, the ELN sent a letter to the Colombian Bishops' Conference asking for help achieving a bilateral ceasefire between their group and the government.

As reported in La Prensa, ELN commander Nicolas Rodriguez Bautista took to Twitter to express his hopes of reaching a bilateral ceasefire with the conservative nation.

"Efforts to achieve peace call on all of us and we do not have doubts about a role for the Catholic Church and other churches in Colombia," wrote Rodriguez Bautista.

The group, which was founded in 1964, said that its members agreed with Pope Francis' recent comments about Colombia not being able to endure another failure, referring to the over 200,000 people that have died due to Colombia's civil war.

“May the bloodshed by thousands of innocent people during long decades of armed conflict ... sustain all the efforts being made, including those on this beautiful island, to achieve definitive reconciliation," the Pope said, according to The Guardian.

To further emphasize their desire for peace with the Colombian government, the ELN has just announced that they plan to free two soldiers they kidnapped last week.

As BBC reports, the group said that the soldiers were in good health and would be released in the coming days.

The soldiers were captured on Oct. 26 during a rebel ambush in which 11 soldiers and one police officer were killed. Authorities said that, after the attack, the rebels placed landmines around the bodies.

Prior to the ambush, the ELN and the Colombian government had been holding exploratory talks as a first step towards engaging in official peace talks.

The ELN maintains last week’s attack did not contradict their wish for peace.

After last week's attack, President Juan Manuel Santos ordered the security forces to increase their attacks on the ELN.