Pope on Gaza: “No future with violence, forced exile, revenge”
After the Angelus, the Pope addressed Catholic associations engaged in solidarity with the people of Gaza. ‘Peoples need peace! Those who truly love them work for peace.’ Mass this morning at St Anne's Church, Vatican. In his homily, he offered an invitation to hope in the midst of war: ‘Peoples crushed by shameless indifference.’
Vatican City (AsiaNews) - ‘Peace for Gaza,’ in capital letters, coloured like a rainbow. This is what a banner read among the faithful who attended Pope Leo XIV's Angelus in St Peter's Square this morning.
Not far away, someone placed the Israeli flag next to the Vatican flag. Prevost addressed the Catholic associations ‘committed to solidarity with the people of the Gaza Strip’ present at the event, on the eve of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, which opens tomorrow in New York and will focus on Palestine and Gaza.
‘Dear friends, I appreciate your initiative, and many others, which throughout the Church express closeness to our brothers and sisters who are suffering in that tormented land,’ he said.
When Pope Leo mentioned the Palestinian enclave, as he had done on Wednesday at the general audience, his words were greeted with applause. With a tense, sombre expression, Leo XIV recalled the ‘tormented land’ that is suffering yet another Israeli offensive in Gaza City, yet another forced displacement, yet another act of relentless violence.
Al Jazeera reports that 46 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks today alone, most of them in the largest population centre.
“With you, with the pastors of the Churches in the Holy Land, I repeat: there is no future based on violence, forced exile, revenge. The peoples need peace! Those who truly love them work for peace”. Once again, a solemn, far from festive applause rose from the square at these new words.
This morning, Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass in the Church of St. Anne in the Vatican at 10 a.m. In his homily, the Pope greeted the Augustinian religious who serve in the pontifical parish. The church is ‘on the border,’ he said. In fact, those who enter and leave Vatican City pass in front of it.
‘May everyone experience that here there are doors and hearts open to prayer, listening and charity!’ he continued. Provost, referring to the Gospel of the day (Lk 16:1-13), which says, ‘You cannot serve both God and wealth’ (Lk 16:13), said: ‘We need to decide on a real lifestyle. It is a matter of choosing where to place our hearts, of clarifying who we sincerely love, whom we serve with dedication, and what is truly good for us.’ In fact, ‘the thirst for wealth risks taking the place of God in our hearts,’ said the pontiff.
The Word of the Lord, he continued in his homily at St Anne's, ‘urges everyone to an inner revolution, a conversion that begins in the heart. Then our hands will open: to give, not to grab.’ Thanks to this ‘revolution,’ we are able to open our minds, broaden our mentality, ‘to plan a better society, not to find deals at the best price.’ .
It is a matter of making a choice from the heart, not out of convenience, or through domination and oppression. ‘Today, in particular, the Church prays that the rulers of nations may be free from the temptation to use wealth against man, transforming it into weapons that destroy peoples and monopolies that humiliate workers,’ said Prevost. ‘Those who serve God become free from wealth.’
Addressing the parish community once again, he added: ‘I encourage you to persevere with hope in a time seriously threatened by war.’ Because of this latest tragedy, ‘entire peoples are today crushed by violence and even more by a shameless indifference that abandons them to a destiny of misery,’ Leo XIV emphasised.
‘Faced with these tragedies, we do not want to be submissive, but to proclaim with words and deeds that Jesus is the Saviour of the world [...]. May his Spirit convert our hearts so that, nourished by the Eucharist, the supreme treasure of the Church, we may become witnesses of charity and peace.’ Peace, so far away, calls for so much commitment.
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