Significantly absent in the long obituaries for Pope Francis in both the New York Times and the Washington Post were mentions of his deep concern for the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. In Francis’s last public message on Easter Sunday, just hours before he died, he had called for a ceasefire in Gaza, and condemned the “deplorable humanitarian situation” there.
The obits also failed to note that Pope Francis had personally telephoned the Holy Family Church in Gaza just about every evening since Israel invaded the territory in October 2023 — including the Saturday night before Easter. The church’s pastor, Rev. Gabriel Romanelli, remembered: “He said he was praying for us, he blessed us, and he thanked us for our prayers.” Other church members said that the Pope “would make sure to speak not only to the priest but to everyone else in the room.”
Pope Francis’s concern for Gaza and Palestine did not start in October 2023. Rev. Munther Isaac, a Palestinian Christian theologian and Lutheran pastor, told Democracy Now:
I think no Palestinian will ever forget when Pope Francis, in 2014, stopped his car, went down, stepped down and prayed at the separation wall separating Jerusalem from Bethlehem — a moment that touched all of us and continued to speak to us for years.