Pope's frequent calls to Catholic church made him revered figure in war-battered Gaza
That appeal also went unheeded. On Monday, Israel’s airstrikes killed at least 14 people, according to medical officials.
In Israel, the pope left a more complicated legacy. He was widely appreciated for his outreach to the Jewish people and tough stance against antisemitism. He also was an advocate for freeing the hostages, meeting with their families during the war.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog remembered Francis as a man of “deep faith and boundless compassion.”
“I truly hope that his prayers for peace in the Middle East and for the safe return of the hostages will soon be answered,” Herzog wrote on social media.
In the past year and a half of war, Francis became increasingly outspoken in his criticism of the Israeli military’s harsh tactics. A month into the war, he urged an investigation into whether Israel’s war amounted to genocide -– a charge Israel vehemently denies.
In December, Francis expressed his pain thinking of Gaza, “of such cruelty, to the machine-gunning of children, to the bombing of schools and hospitals. ... How much cruelty!”
The next month, he called the ongoing humanitarian crisis “very serious and shameful.”
Francis was mourned throughout the Arab world and by UN officials, including Philippe Lazzarini, head of the agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. He posted on X that the pope’s voice “has contributed to draw the attention to significant dehumanization of the war in Gaza & beyond.”
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said Francis was a “steadfast advocate for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, particularly in his unwavering stance against the war and acts of genocide perpetrated against our people in Gaza in recent months.”
The Holy Land’s Christian community has dwindled over the decades through emigration and a low birthrate and makes up just a small percentage of the overall population.
Only 1,000 Christians live in Gaza, an overwhelmingly Muslim territory, according to the U.S. State Department’s international religious freedom report for 2024. The report says the majority of Palestinian Christians are Greek Orthodox but they also include other Christians, including Roman Catholics.
Last year, Francis told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he calls a priest daily at 7 p.m. at the Holy Family Church, the only Catholic church in Gaza, to hear what is happening to the nearly 600 people sheltering at the facility.
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