Pope Francis prayed last Sunday for “the gift of peace” for those “suffering due to war”, including “martyred Palestine”, Israel and Lebanon.
He was speaking at the Angelus after presiding at the canonisation of 14 saints including the “Damascus Martyrs” – eight Franciscan friars and three lay Maronite Catholics murdered in Syria on one night in 1860.
Fr Luke Gregory OFM of the Custos of the Holy Land said the canonisation was “a sign of hope because after bloodshed comes the spring”, and that it could “lead to dialogue”.
Three days earlier, on 17 October, he met Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister of Israel, and Nasser Al-Kidwa, a former Palestinian foreign minister, who presented a joint peace plan for the Holy Land beginning with an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as a step towards a two-state solution.
Olmert was Israel’s prime minister during the 2006 war in Lebanon, and is credited with making the last serious attempt to reach an agreement for the creation of a Palestinian state with Mahmoud Abbas.
“Pope Francis gave us extraordinary attention for more than half an hour, explaining that he follows every development of the conflict daily and that every day he connects with the Christians of Gaza,” Olmert said.
He reported that their message was “that the war in Gaza has to be stopped, that the hostages have to be returned to their families, that Israel has to pull out completely from Gaza, and that Israel and the Palestinians must embark immediately on negotiations for comprehensive peace on the two-state solution”.
He also proposed a special agreement for the status of the Old City of Jerusalem, placing it under the jurisdiction of a trust comprising five nations, including Palestine and Israel, which would give access for people of all faiths.
Nasser Al-Kidwa said that the release of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas could be alongside the simultaneous release of an agreed number of the 11,400 Palestinian detainees in West Bank detention centres and prisons. He hoped Pope Francis “will bless the plan and he will bless our actions and that definitely is going to make a huge difference”.
Preaching at a Mass in Rome on Monday, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa said the canonisation of the Damascus Martyrs was “not just about glorifying figures of the past”.
He said that Christians suffering in the Middle East, “which is invaded by hatred, religious fanaticism, desires for revenge and retaliation, causing brutal violence”, also faced “a form of martyrdom”.
“While it may be hard for us to change the world of politics, we will not make possible for the world of politics to change us,” the patriarch said. “We will not allow the logic of violence to have the last word or be the only voice in the Middle East.
During his visit to Rome, Cardinal Pizzaballa said it was “not realistic to talk about peace” in the Holy Land. He told EWTN that “all the previous agreements, ideas, the prospective two-state solution, everything is not realistic now”.
He warned that “the language of hatred” threatened the region’s future, insisting that “peace is an attitude”.
“Palestinians and Israelis are called by God to live one close to another, not against the other,” he said. “And they have to rediscover their call.”
Archbishop Atallah Hanna of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem last week described conditions in Gaza as “an unprecedented disaster in modern history.”
He called for “a fast movement to save our people in northern Gaza, for those who did not die from shells and rockets are subject to death from hunger and thirst.”
He appealed to Churches internationally: “Raise your voice demanding a stop to the war in Gaza and Lebanon.”
The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres on Monday condemned the “continued and widespread” loss of life across Gaza, including Israeli strikes on a residential block in Beit Lahiya last Saturday which killed at least 87 people and injured more than 40.
“Gaza is the real-world embodiment of hell on earth for its million children,” said a Unicef spokesperson, reporting that hospitals faced critical shortages of fuel and medical supplies.
“Hospitals have been hit and are left without power while injured people are left without care,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency reported on social media.
“Denying and weaponising humanitarian assistance to achieve military purposes is a sign of how low the moral compass is … no one should beg to assist or to be assisted,” he wrote.
The Gazan health authorities have recorded at least 42,603 deaths and 99,795 others people injured since the war began last October, the Hamas-run authorities say.
On Tuesday the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel in an effort to reinstate the stalled diplomatic process for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and a deal to release the hostages.
In Lebanon, ongoing Israeli airstrikes across the country “continue to kill and injure civilians and displace a growing number of families”, according to the latest update from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The scale of displacement has overwhelmed available shelters. “As of the weekend, nearly 1,100 collective shelters have opened in Lebanon hosting some 192,000 displaced people. More than 900 of these are already at full capacity,” said OCHA.
On 16 October Lebanon’s Christian and Muslim leaders issued a joint appeal: “God give our people hope to withstand this catastrophe”.
They met at an extraordinary summit convened by the Patriarchate of Bkerké. Maronite Patriarch Béchara Boutros Raï was present and the apostolic nuncio to Lebanon, Archbishop Paolo Borgia. The “barbaric Israeli aggression against Lebanon … undermines the dignity and pride of all Lebanese and of the Lebanese people", they said in a statement.
The leaders called for political stability within Lebanon and urged the UN Security Council “to meet immediately and without delay to take the decision to impose a ceasefire and end this humanitarian massacre of Lebanon”.
They thanked the UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon “for the efforts and sacrifices they make to protect Lebanon’s southern borders and the people of this region”, and “their persistence in their positions despite the unjustified Israeli harassment and warnings aimed at eradicating all witnesses to the brutal massacres they are committing against our homeland”.
The statement also thanked the Lebanese population for their generous reception of displaced people. Around half of Lebanon’s state schools, including Catholic schools, have been converted into shelters for displaced people, especially in the south and in the Bekaa Valley.
The UNHCR reported that more than 420,000 people have crossed into Syria, and nearly 17,000 were seeking shelter in Iraq.
Loading ...
