Pope Leo XIV (Image from Yahoo News)
By Walt Zlotow
During his last 19 months on Earth, Pope Francis continually condemned the US enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza and demanded its end. Since it began shortly after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, Francis called Gaza’s Holy Family Parish nightly inquiring of their wellbeing.
But he also publicly implored the purveyors of genocide to stop. Last January he demanded that:
“We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians … that children are freezing to death because hospitals have been destroyed.”
A few weeks earlier he pondered whether Israel’s military campaign amounted to genocide. Israel responded by accusing Francis of antisemitism. No surprise there.
On April 3, 2024 Francis condemned Israeli killing of aid workers. He called for an investigation into the unfolding genocide in Gaza, urging the world not to look away from the suffering of its people.
“I am thinking above all of those who leave Gaza in the midst of the famine that has struck their Palestinian brothers and sisters given the difficulty of getting food and aid into their territory.”
Francis spoke out against Israeli to the end. Just a few hours before dying, he delivered his Urbi et Orbi message; “to the city and to the world” focusing on the Holy Land, calling it “wounded by conflict and gripped by endless of violence.” He expressed solidarity with the Muslim and Christian community where:
“… the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation. I appeal once again for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.”
But neither practitioner of the genocide, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu nor America’s Donald Trump, took notice. Trump continues to send the bombs Netanyahu uses to obliterate dozens, sometimes hundreds of innocents daily while denying them food, water, medicine; indeed everything needed to sustain life.
New Pope Leo XIV should take note of Francis’ peaceful demands that haven’t breached the cruelty of genocide practitioners Netanyahu and Trump. He should shame them into humanity by scheduling his first foreign trip to minister to Gaza’s Holy Family Parish where hundreds of Muslims and Christians huddle to survive the worst genocide this century.
Leo XIV should vow to pray with those dying souls there till a permanent ceasefire is achieved.
Netanyahu wouldn’t dare continue the relentless bombing with Trump’s US bombs dropped from Trump‘s US planes.
Or would he?
Walt Zlotow
West Suburban Peace Coalition
Glen Ellyn IL
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This seems to me to be wishful thinking. Given that the new pope has been seen in the past to be critical of Trump (or at least, some of Trump's actions), I can't see Trump encouraging withholding fire because of the pope (or a papal envoy) in Gaza. Trump is about two things: personal fealty, and revenge. I imagine he'd jump at the chance to show the pope, in the current world, who's really the boss. And I don't think Netanyahu cares any more than Trump does.
Both Trump and Netanyahu have shown an abysmal and abhorrent lack of care of human lives; they seem to care for nothing, nothing at all, but their own power.
If the pope or a papal envoy enters a war zone, well, that would just be his bad luck.