Pope Francis appealed for the immediate release of more than 100 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza on Wednesday and expressed concern for the safety of Palestinian civilians living in the Gaza Strip.
“I pray for those families who saw a feast day transformed into a day of mourning, and I ask that the hostages be immediately released,” Pope Francis said on Oct. 11.
Some 130 Israeli hostages were taken by the militant Islamist group Hamas during its attack on Israel last weekend. The terrorist group has threatened to kill one hostage every time that Israel’s military bombs civilian targets in Gaza “without warning,” according to the Associated Press.
Speaking to thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his Wednesday morning audience, the pope underlined that “terrorism and extremism do not help to reach a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but they fuel hatred, violence, revenge, and only make both suffer.”
The pope said that he has been following “what is happening in Israel and Palestine with tears and apprehension.” After Hamas’ attack on Israel killed 1,000 people, the Israeli government vowed retaliation and launched airstrikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Francis said: “It is the right of those who are attacked to defend themselves, but I am very worried about the total siege in which the Palestinians live in Gaza, where there have been many innocent victims.”
“The Middle East does not need war, but peace, a peace built on justice, dialogue and the courage of fraternity,” he added.
The appeal was the second time that Pope Francis has spoken publicly about the war in Israel since the surprise attack last weekend.
On Sunday, the pope prayed for peace between Israel and Palestine and expressed sorrow that “violence has exploded even more ferociously” between the two, words that drew criticism from Israel’s Embassy to the Holy See who issued a statement warning against “the use of linguistic ambiguities and terms that allude to a false symmetry.”
The priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, who is currently stranded in Bethlehem, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, Oct. 9 that the situation “continues to be very bad” and that his Gaza parish is sheltering more than 80 Christians and Muslims amid Israeli airstrikes.
Families of the victims taken hostage by Hamas are desperately waiting to find out if their missing loved ones are safe. An American woman, Abbey Onn, whose five relatives in southern Israel were taken hostage, told CBS News that she had seen a video on social media on Sunday of her 12-year-old relative in the hands of Hamas.
“These are civilians who are being terrorized and we want them brought home,” she said.
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Pope Francis opens the Holy Door in L’Aquila, Italy on Aug. 28, 2022. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Aug 28, 2022 / 04:15 am (CNA).
Pope Francis became the first pope in 728 years to open the Holy Door of a 13th-century basilica in L’Aquila, Italy on Sunday.
During a visit to the Italian city located about 70 miles northeast of Rome on Aug. 28, the pope participated in a centuries-old tradition, the Celestinian Forgiveness, known in Italian as the Perdonanza Celestiniana.
The opening of the Holy Door marked a key moment in the annual celebration established by Pope Celestine V in 1294.
“For centuries L’Aquila has kept alive the gift that Pope Celestine V left it. It is the privilege of reminding everyone that with mercy, and only with it, the life of every man and woman can be lived with joy,” Pope Francis said in his homily during Mass at L’Aquila’s Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio.
“To be forgiven is to experience here and now what comes closest to the resurrection. Forgiveness is passing from death to life, from the experience of anguish and guilt to that of freedom and joy. May this church always be a place where we can be reconciled, and experience that grace that puts us back on our feet and gives us another chance,” he said.
Pope Francis began the day trip at 7:50 a.m. traveling by helicopter from the Vatican to L’Aquila. He visited the city’s cathedral, which is still being rebuilt after it was badly damaged during a 2019 earthquake in which more than 300 people died.
The pope wore a hard hat while touring the reconstruction area of the damaged church. He spoke to family members of earthquake victims in the town square in front of the cathedral, where local prisoners were also present in the crowd. People cheered and waved Vatican flags as Pope Francis greeted them from a wheelchair.
Pope Francis said: “First of all I thank you for your witness of faith: despite the pain and loss, which belong to our faith as pilgrims, you have fixed your gaze on Christ, crucified and risen, who with his love redeemed the nonsense of pain and death.”
“And Jesus has placed you back in the arms of the Father, who does not let a tear fall in vain, not even one, but gathers them all in his merciful heart,” he added.
After speaking to the families of the victims, Pope Francis traveled in the popemobile to L’Aquila’s Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, where he celebrated an outdoor Mass, recited the Angelus, and opened the Holy Door.
In his brief Angelus message, the pope offered a prayer for the people of Pakistan, where flash floods have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced thousands more.
Pope Francis also asked for the intercession of the Virgin Mary to obtain “forgiveness and peace for the whole world,” mentioning Ukraine and all other places suffering from war.
During his visit to L’Aquila, the pope said that he wanted the central Italian city to become a “capital of forgiveness, peace, and reconciliation.”
“This is how peace is built through forgiveness received and given,” he said.
L’Aquila is the burial place of Pope Celestine V, who led the Catholic Church for just five months before his resignation on Dec. 13, 1294. The pope, who was canonized in 1313, is buried in L’Aquila’s Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio.
In the spring, the Vatican’s announcement that Pope Francis would visit L’Aquila prompted unsourced speculation that the trip could be the prelude to the 85-year-old pope’s resignation.
When Benedict XVI became the first pope to resign in almost 600 years in 2013, Vatican-watchers recalled that he had visited the tomb of Celestine V years earlier. During his trip on April 28, 2009, he left his pallium — the white wool vestment given to metropolitan archbishops — on the tomb. In hindsight, commentators suggested that Benedict was indicating his intention to resign.
In his homily in L’Aquila, Pope Francis praised Pope Celestine V for his humility and courage.
Mentioning Dante Alighieri’s description of Celestine as the man of “the great refusal,” Pope Francis underlined that Celestine should not be remembered as a man of “no” — for resigning the papacy — but as a man of “yes.”
Pope Francis said: “Indeed, there is no other way to accomplish God’s will than by assuming the strength of the humble, there is no other way. Precisely because they are so, the humble appear weak and losers in the eyes of men, but in reality they are the true winners, for they are the only ones who trust completely in the Lord and know his will.”
At the end of the Mass, the crowd prayed the Litany of Saints and watched as Pope Francis made history when he opened the basilica’s Holy Door. According to Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi of L’Aquila, Pope Francis is the first pope to open the Holy Door in 728 years.
Visiting cardinals have opened the Holy Door for the Celestinian Forgiveness in past years, after a reading of the bull of forgiveness by the local mayor. Celestine donated the papal bull to L’Aquila, where it is kept in an armored chapel in the tower of the town hall.
The bull of forgiveness drawn up by Celestine V offered a plenary indulgence to all who, having confessed and repented of their sins, go to the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio from Vespers on Aug. 28 to sunset on Aug. 29. A plenary indulgence is a grace granted by the Catholic Church through the merits of Jesus Christ, Mary, and all the saints to remove the temporal punishment due to sin.
Celestine’s indulgence was exceptional at the time, given it was available to anyone, regardless of status or wealth, and cost nothing except personal repentance at a time when indulgences were often tied to almsgiving.
After opening the Holy Door, Pope Francis was wheeled through the basilica to the tomb of Pope Celestine V, where he spent a moment in silent prayer before the relics of his papal predecessor who was declared a saint in 1313.
“In the spirit of the world, which is dominated by pride, today’s Word of God invites us to be humble and meek. Humility does not consist in the devaluation of self, but rather in that healthy realism that makes us recognize our potential and also our miseries,” Pope Francis said.
“Starting precisely from our miseries, humility causes us to look away from ourselves and turn our gaze to God, the One who can do everything and also obtains for us what we cannot have on our own. ‘Everything is possible for those who believe (Mark 9:23).'”
Vatican City, Jul 28, 2019 / 05:45 am (CNA).- As up to 150 migrants are feared to have drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Libya, Pope Francis made an appeal to the international community Sunday to act decisively to ensure the safety and dignity o… […]
Vatican City, Jan 22, 2017 / 04:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After his Angelus address Sunday Pope Francis prayed for those who have lost family and friends after the latest set of earthquakes in central Italy this past week, as well as for all those who pr… […]
3 Comments
Israel may not attack Palestinian civilians because of this hostage situation.
Israel has no recourse to methods and effects of terrorists. It may not attack civilians because terrorists or alleged terrorists attacked Israeli civilians. There is no such allowance for arbitrary action whether retaliatory or something else. The whole international community is obliged to denounce the means chosen by Israel so far to deal with the terrorism; as well as denounce the Netanyahu-coalition’s plans afoot amounting to the same thing. The Palestinians and the rest of the world deserve collaboration from Israel in isolating these crimes and those who perpetrate them, whether the criminals are Hamas or ISIS or infiltrators of whatever description into these groups. I recall that less than 3 years ago Netanyahu and his agendas were in trouble precisely because he was no longer trusted on his outlooks for war.
Israel is obliged to accept the burden of responsibility for the Palestinian peace and the two state solution.
Do Palestinians possess any obligation to renounce the all consuming genocidal mania that led them to abandon their homelands to initiate a complete war of annihilation against the Jews in the first place, a genocidal commitment so obsessive and venomous they have never relinquished it in the slightest even while sacrificing the welfare of their own people, even using them as shields, towards this end?
Can you argue against the reality that if Muslim terrorists laid down their arms, a virtual impossibility, but if they did, peace would finally exist in the Middle East? And if Israel committed to unilateral laying down its arms, is it not the case that it would begin the instantaneous process of extermination of every single Jew in the State of Israel by Muslim forces of all factions?
You can not be bombing civilians and hospitals and schools and killing reporters. You can not say, o dear us we had a security breach and therefore now we can bomb civilians at length to our satisfaction until it suits us because Hamas is at war and we will change everything around in the Middle East.
Israel in particular ALSO has claims on land that are incompatible with 2-state. And in addition there are the Zionists that intend on one result. Until these are addressed rationally forthrightly everything else is smokescreen.
Israel may not attack Palestinian civilians because of this hostage situation.
Israel has no recourse to methods and effects of terrorists. It may not attack civilians because terrorists or alleged terrorists attacked Israeli civilians. There is no such allowance for arbitrary action whether retaliatory or something else. The whole international community is obliged to denounce the means chosen by Israel so far to deal with the terrorism; as well as denounce the Netanyahu-coalition’s plans afoot amounting to the same thing. The Palestinians and the rest of the world deserve collaboration from Israel in isolating these crimes and those who perpetrate them, whether the criminals are Hamas or ISIS or infiltrators of whatever description into these groups. I recall that less than 3 years ago Netanyahu and his agendas were in trouble precisely because he was no longer trusted on his outlooks for war.
Israel is obliged to accept the burden of responsibility for the Palestinian peace and the two state solution.
Do Palestinians possess any obligation to renounce the all consuming genocidal mania that led them to abandon their homelands to initiate a complete war of annihilation against the Jews in the first place, a genocidal commitment so obsessive and venomous they have never relinquished it in the slightest even while sacrificing the welfare of their own people, even using them as shields, towards this end?
Can you argue against the reality that if Muslim terrorists laid down their arms, a virtual impossibility, but if they did, peace would finally exist in the Middle East? And if Israel committed to unilateral laying down its arms, is it not the case that it would begin the instantaneous process of extermination of every single Jew in the State of Israel by Muslim forces of all factions?
I had made comment about that here.
You can not be bombing civilians and hospitals and schools and killing reporters. You can not say, o dear us we had a security breach and therefore now we can bomb civilians at length to our satisfaction until it suits us because Hamas is at war and we will change everything around in the Middle East.
Israel in particular ALSO has claims on land that are incompatible with 2-state. And in addition there are the Zionists that intend on one result. Until these are addressed rationally forthrightly everything else is smokescreen.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/10/08/pope-francis-jerusalem-patriarch-react-to-violence-between-israel-and-hamas/