On 1 May Pope Francis appointed Italian Bishop Paolo Martinelli OFMCap as the new Apostolic Vicar of the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia (Arabian Peninsula).
He did so after accepting the resignation after more than a decade of Martinell’s fellow Capuchin, Bishop Paul Hinder, 80. Hinder gave an interview to Vatican News in which he discussed the war in Yemen, where a two-month ceasefire is about to expire. Latest statistics report that 17.4 million people – more than half of the population – are in acute food insecurity, and 2.2 million children may experience starvation.
Bishop Hinder lamented that Yemen is often forgotten because other conflicts are closer to the hearts of many people and to the media. “Certain people are simply tired of hearing the same news always,” he said.
“Of course, there are different parties [Saudi Arabia and Iran] involved in the Yemen conflict [but] theologically speaking, we have also to take into account the devil who is always there as the troublemaker –without denying the responsibility of the people involved.
This reality makes me reflect further on the importance of the power of prayer. As Jesus told us, there are some demons which cannot be driven out without prayer.”
According to the United Nations, the conflict in Yemen between a Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels drawn from the nation's Shia Muslim minority has led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Reduced supplies of wheat due to the ongoing war in Ukraine are likely to push hunger levels in Yemen even higher as the country struggles to recover from one of the largest cholera outbreaks in history, with 2.5 million suffering from the illness.
Over 100,000 people have been displaced because of the fighting there, and two million civilians are reportedly at risk of displacement. Both sides have committed war crimes, according to human rights monitors.
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