Pope calls Gaza airstrikes ‘cruelty’ after Israeli minister’s criticism By Reuters

By Joshua McElwee

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly condemned the pontiff for suggesting the world community investigate whether the military offensive there was genocide against the Palestinian people.

Francis opened his annual Christmas message to Catholic cardinals who head various Vatican departments with what appeared to be a reference to Friday’s Israeli airstrikes that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.

“The children were bombed yesterday,” said the Pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”

The pope, as head of the 1.4 billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually cautious about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against the Palestinian group Hamas.

In excerpts from a book published last month, the pontiff said some international experts say “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide.”

Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli sharply criticized the comments in an unusually open letter published in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said that the pope’s words are “undermining” the term genocide.

Francis also said Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as the patriarch, tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there but was denied entry.

The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was unable to comment on the pope’s remarks about denying the patriarch entry.

Israel’s military said on Saturday that the patriarch’s entry had been approved and he would enter Gaza on Sunday, ruling out any serious security problems. Aid from the patriarch’s office arrived last week, the military said.

Israel is allowing clerics to enter Gaza and is “working in cooperation with the Christian community to facilitate the transfer of the remaining Christian population from the Gaza Strip to a third country,” the military statement said.

The war began when Palestinian militants led by Hamas attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign, which it says is aimed at destroying Hamas, has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to Hamas-run Gaza authorities.The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.

Israel says at least a third of the dead were militants and says it is trying to avoid harming civilians, but is fighting militants it accuses of infiltrating the population in densely populated urban areas.