The Pope is regularly informed about the situation in Gaza through phone calls he makes to the Holy Family parish, the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip.
Pope Francis today condemned the “cruelty” of an Israeli air strike in Gaza that caused the death of seven children from the same Palestinian family, denounced on Friday by the Civil Defense of the Gaza Strip.
“Yesterday [sexta-feira]bombed children. This is cruelty, not war. I want to say this because it touches my heart,” the Catholic pontiff told members of the Holy See government during the Christmas greeting audience to the Roman Curia.
Francis also denounced that Israeli authorities denied access to Gaza to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa.
“Yesterday [sexta-feira] they did not allow the Patriarch to enter Gaza, as they had promised”, said the pontiff, referring to Pizzaballa, in front of the cardinals and other religious present at the audience.
The Pope is informed about the situation in Gaza through phone calls he makes to the Holy Family parish, the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip.
Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the Gaza Strip Civil Defense, told AFP on Friday that the attack was “a massacre of the (Israeli) occupation” that “martyred ten members of the Khalla family, who were the target of an air strike to his home in Jabalia”, near the city of Gaza.
All of the dead “belonged to the same family, including seven children, the oldest being six years old”, he said, adding that 15 people were injured.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army declared that the number of deaths reported by Civil Defense in Gaza “does not correspond to the information it has”.
Israeli forces “hit several terrorists who operated in a military structure” of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and “represented a threat”, he declared.
Pope Francis, 88, has been calling for peace since Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli retaliation campaign in Gaza. In recent weeks he has strengthened his position against the Israeli offensive.
At the end of November he stated that “the invader’s arrogance (…) prevails over dialogue” in Palestine, a rare position that contrasts with the Holy See’s tradition of neutrality.
In extracts from a soon-to-be-published book released in November, Francis called for a “meticulous” study to determine whether the situation in Gaza “meets the technical definition” of genocide, an accusation firmly rejected by Israel.
The Holy See supports the so-called two-state solution, Israeli and Palestinian, and has recognized the State of Palestine since 2013, with which it maintains diplomatic relations.
The war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has already caused the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
More than 45,000 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas Government’s Ministry of Health, considered reliable by the UN.
