On Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV renewed his call for a ceasefire in Gaza and for Israel to allow humanitarian aid to enter the besieged Palestinian territory.
“The situation in Gaza is increasingly worrying and painful,” Leo said during his first general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.
“I renew my appeal to allow the entry of dignified humanitarian aid and to put an end to the hostilities, whose heartbreaking price is paid by the children, elderly, and the sick,” he added.
Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on March 2, and in recent days, has allowed a small number of trucks to enter the enclave. However, according to the latest reports, no aid has reached the starving population. The UN said on Tuesday night that its teams were unable to access aid trucks on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing.
Since being elected pope on May 8, Leo, the first US-born pontiff, has made several calls for peace in Gaza and other conflict zones around the world. At the conclusion of his inaugural Mass on Sunday, Leo urged Catholics to keep in mind those suffering in Gaza, Myanmar, and Ukraine.
“In the joy of faith and communion, we cannot forget our brothers and sisters who suffer because of war. In Gaza, the surviving children, families, and the elderly are reduced to starvation,” he said.
Leo has also offered to host peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. President Trump noted Leo’s offer in a recent statement on future Russia-Ukraine ceasefire negotiations, suggesting the Vatican could be the venue.
The starvation is cruel. But why do these lofty speakers ignore the bombing, the snipers, the burning alive, the children without limbs?
To be fair, the last pope did not https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pope-francis-gaza/
Hopefully this one will follow suit.
It’s too late.
People with a soft life identify more with not having enough to eat?
It's almost as if the Israeli regime is testing the World to see if it will actually tolerate another Holocaust 80 years after the mass murder of European Jewry. It wouldn't be the first time the abused became an abuser.
They are and so far the world is failing including the pope.
'You will become what you hate the most.' –Unknown
If the Church (which I was raised in, this is not Catholic-bashing) were to threaten anyone with excommunication for aiding apartheid regimes and genocide, we begin to take this seriously. Put it in the same alligator arms basket as the UK summoning the Israeli ambassador to say they are totally postponing (public) meetings for free trade with Israel, slated for 2030, for a bit until people move on to other things.
As it stands the Church won't even come out with a full-throated condemnation of armed Nazism, knowing that'd cost them a good % of their European base.
The Vatican helped the original nazis escape.
And laundered their money. And signed the first treaty the Third Reich ever made with a foreign power. And never excommunicated the Fuhrer.
And they got good paying jobs in the USA, especially Los Angeles.
People largely overlook Croatia, where a Catholic priest served as the Nazi puppet 'head of state' while other Catholic priests ran an extermination camp, mostly for Serbs. One priest had a knife-glove invention he called his "Serb-cutter."
Fascism has been the political expression of conservative Catholicism in Europe for a century. It didn't go anywhere, the commies just managed to suppress it to home life for some time.
I wasn’t aware of that. Absolutely sickening.
Excommunicate Netanyahoo and Smotrich from a church they're not members of?
Biden comes to mind.
So you still think Biden was running things eh?
Swing and a miss. Biden should be excommunicated for supporting and enabling a genocide. And that would be the case whether he was running things or not.
Question is, does excommunication (this coming from someone also loosely raised in Catholicism who 'voluntarily self-excommunicated' around the age of 16) carry that much weight any more ?
Many of the RCC's flock, especially in The West, are "cafeteria Catholics", making & taking their own moral stances on opinions without regard to actual Vatican decrees (or biblical dogma).
Being denied an archaic, pseudocannibalistic rite involving a bland gummy wafer might freak out some older parishioners or exceptionally devout ones, but younger & more worldly faithful can appeal to "faith and/or works" as their soteriological basis OR lodge a protest(ant) vote against the Papalcy and convert to one of the other ~35,000 versions of Christianity. Or simply ignore communion doctrine (not the Whitley Streiber version) and lean on other sacraments, baptism and confirmation in particular (and last rites when they get there).
From your posts I gathered you must be an ex-Catholic, Baptist or Pentecostal with an ax to grind with the God of your youth. Don't throw out Jesus with the bathwater, i.e. ceremonies, plaster statues and the rest. Read Pascal's Wager here: https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/pascal_wager.pdf
The Pope has a hammer, if he’s not using it for that nail what good is it? Excommunication is less symbolic than speechifying minus same.
I'm still recovering from 10 years of Catholic school and I'm 70.
They got my wife pretty good, her recovery’s been a process. I was lucky, public school with CCD classes.
He needs to haul his and his cardinals, bishops and priest's asses to Israel and hand carry aid into Gaza with trucks following them. Then I'll know they have the greater love Jesus spoke of.
The terrorists would kill them. Then the terrorists would blame Hamas.
This Pope can f**king DO something about it, or join all his predecessors in living memory as another Guy Who Is All Funny Hat And No Cattle.
If the Pope continues this rhetoric, he'll just be branded anti-Semitic. Israel knows how to alienate itself from people, they've had a lot of practice through the centuries.
The Pope could start by sending home the Israeli ambassador and recalling he Vatican ambassador to Israel, but that won't happen, it might wake up those billions of Catholics world wide who may start withholding alms from the church if no further action takes place.