Cardinal Vincent Nichols has urged Catholics to visit Gaza and pray for its people following a visit this weekend that he described as “traumatic” and deeply shocking.
Entire sections of the city were destroyed by the months-long war that took place between Israel and Hamas last summer, he said, adding that almost half of Gazans had had their houses damaged or destroyed.
“The poverty is a real deep problem, especially when the birth rate is so high and a whole generation are growing up in these circumstances.”
Cardinal Vincent Nichols in Gaza Photo:Mazur/catholicnews.org.ukExtremism could flourish under such a climate, he worried, adding that relationships between Israeli and Palestinian communities were dangerously stretched.
“There has to be a political impetus to fill the void because the fear I meet here is that extremists are being left with a more and more significant role, and that must surely be a recipe for a depending break up of the fragile links and bonds between people that are still here at the moment,” he said.
Later he told The Guardian “the innocent citizens of Gaza [were] caught in a vice of conflicting ideologies”.
During the trip Cardinal Nichols visited a hospital and an orphanage and said Mass at a church that had offered shelter to Muslim and Christian Gazans during Israeli missile strikes.
He urged Catholics to lobby the political leaders of Palestine and Israel to work toward lasting peace. The region was safe to visit, he added.
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