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Pope Leo XIV attends general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, on May 21, 2025. [isabella Bonotto – Anadolu Agency ]
Pope Leo XIV on Thursday renewed his call for “an immediate ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip and expressed his “profound hope” for “dialogue, reconciliation and lasting peace in the region,” following an Israeli attack on a Catholic church sheltering civilians, Anadolu reports.
The appeal came in a telegram signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin after the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza was hit during an Israeli military raid.
The pope said he was “deeply saddened” by the assault on the parish, which has provided refuge to more than 500 people since the beginning of the war.
Among those injured was the parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, who sustained a light leg wound and was treated at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City.
The pontiff addressed Father Romanelli directly in the telegram, assuring him of his “spiritual closeness” and offering prayers to the entire parish community.
“Entrusting the souls of the deceased to the loving mercy of Almighty God,” the pope said he is praying “for the consolation of those who mourn and for the healing of the wounded.”
In the course of its deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army has bombed several worship places, including the Gaza Baptist Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, the oldest in the Gaza Strip and the third oldest in the world.
The Holy Family Church is the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip, which has been sheltering many displaced Christian and Muslim Palestinians since October 2023.
The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, has pursued a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing nearly 58,600 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
Pope Francis before the “Nativity of Bethlehem 2024” in the Paul VI Hall. Photo: Vatican News
Israel continues to commit massacres in Gaza, and has launched attacks on Pope Francis for speaking up in defense of the Palestinian people.
Pope Francis issued a sharp condemnation of the ongoing Israeli genocidal aggression on the Gaza strip this past weekend, just ahead of Christmas. His statements came after the Gaza Civil Defense rescue agency reported the killing of 12 people from the same family, including seven children, in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s northern city of Jabalia on Friday, December 20.
The Pontiff lamented the bombing of children in Gaza with deep sorrow during his traditional address to the cardinals, bishops, priests and lay people of the Roman Curia at the Vatican on Saturday, December 21.
“This is cruelty. This is not war. I want to say this because it touches the heart,” Pope Francis said. He also pointed out that the airstrikes had prevented the highest representative of the Catholic church in the Holy Land, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, from entering Gaza the previous day.
Following Pope Francis’s Saturday address, the Israeli authorities allowed Pizzaballa to enter Gaza on Sunday, December 22, where he celebrated mass in the small Christian community of the Holy Family parish in Gaza City.
During a midday Angelus on Sunday, December 22, Pope Francis reiterated his repudiation of Israel’s continuous massacring of children in Gaza. “With sorrow I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty; of the children machine-gunned, the bombing of schools and hospitals…So much cruelty!”, the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State said.
On December 8, Pope Francis had issued an appeal addressing political leaders and the international community to reach a ceasefire on “all war fronts” by Christmas. “I appeal to Governments and the International Community that a ceasefire may be reached on all war fronts by the Christmas celebrations,” the appeal reads.
One day earlier, Pope Francis unveiled the annual nativity scene at the Vatican featuring baby Jesus draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh, which highlighted the Holy Family’s connection to the occupied Palestinian city of Bethlehem and served as a poignant nod to the Palestinian struggle.
Last November, Pope Francis urged that allegations of a genocide in Gaza should be “carefully investigated”. “According to some experts…what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” the Pontiff writes in a forthcoming book. “It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies,” he writes.
Pope Francis also calls the leader of the Catholic Church in Gaza every night to check on them and hear news of how they are surviving which inevitably gives him an intimate look into the immense suffering and difficulties faced by the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The nativity scene and Pope Francis’s call for an investigation into the Israeli genocide in Gaza were slammed by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs and “Combating Antisemitism” Minister Amichai Chikli, who accused the Catholic leader of “deliberately adopting the Palestinian narrative.”
“Two weeks ago, you took part in a display that echoes the Palestinian narrative, portraying Jesus as a Palestinian Arab,” Chikli wrote in a strongly-worded letter sent to Pope Francis on Thursday, December 19. “Had this been a one-time matter, I would not have written. However, in a more severe expression, you recently insinuated that the State of Israel ‘might be’ committing genocide in Gaza,” the Israeli minister added. Chikli even went further by saying: “It is a well-known fact that Jesus was born to a Jewish mother, lived as a Jew and died as a Jew.”
Chikli’s statements once again reveal the paradox of the Israeli rhetoric, as people of the Christian community were among the first civilians to be crushed by the Israeli war machine in Gaza. In October 2023, St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City, which is believed to be the third oldest church in the world, was bombed by Israeli warplanes while providing shelter for an estimated 500 Palestinians, most of whom were Christians. 16 Palestinian Christians were killed and dozens others injured in the assault, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip.
In May 2024, the Palestinian State Minister of Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shahin revealed during her meeting with a delegation from Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) that 3% of Gaza’s Christians were killed in the Israeli genocidal aggression on Gaza since October 7, 2023.
“The Israeli war has resulted in the death of 3% of Gaza’s Christians and the destruction of churches amid restrictions (on Christians) in the West Bank,” Shahin stated. Meanwhile, Gaza’s government media office estimated that at least three churches were destroyed in Israeli attacks in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.
Israel’s targeting of Christians and their holy sites is yet another evidence of its systematic ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous Palestinian people regardless of their faith.
For the second year, Palestinians are canceling Christmas celebrations to show solidarity with Gaza. “We chose to restrict Christmas celebrations to prayers as a stand against the oppression faced by Gaza and all of Palestine”, Bethlehem Mayor Anton Salman said a couple of days prior to the Christmas eve.
Pope Francis attends his weekly general audience in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican, on August 07, 2024 [Riccardo De Luca/Anadolu Agency]
Pope Francis on Saturday condemned the recent Israeli air strikes on Gaza, expressing sorrow over the bombing of children in the Gaza Strip the previous day, Anadolu reports.
“Yesterday, children were bombed. This is not war. This is cruelty. I want to say this because it touches my heart,” he told members of the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s central administration.
He also lamented that Israeli air strikes had prevented Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the highest representative of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, from entering Gaza.
Israel has killed more than 45,000 people, most of them women and children, in Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, and reduced the territory to rubble.
On Nov. 21, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its military campaign in the enclave.
The pontiff has also called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s attacks in Gaza constitute genocide, according to excerpts from an upcoming new book.
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