GAZA SITUATION “EXTREMELY GRAVE”
Pope Francis, who has recently grown more critical of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, describing it last week as “cruelty”, also renewed his call for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas war and for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
He called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “extremely grave” and asked for “the doors of dialogue and peace (to) be flung open”.
The Israeli-Hamas war began when Hamas-led Palestinian militants attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign, which it says is aimed at eliminating Hamas, has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, said authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.
Pope Francis opened a Holy Year for the global Catholic Church on Tuesday evening, Christmas Eve, which will run through Jan 6, 2026. A Catholic Holy Year, also known as a Jubilee, is considered a time of peace, forgiveness and pardon.
On Wednesday, the pope said the Jubilee year should be a time for “every individual, and all peoples and nations … to become pilgrims of hope, to silence the sound of arms and overcome divisions”.
Pope Francis also said it should be a time “to tear down all walls of separation”.
He called for a “mutually agreed solution” to bring down the border wall that has divided the Mediterranean island of Cyprus between the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since 1974.
