The Catholic patriarchs of the Middle East invited “all those of goodwill around the world to observe a day of prayer and fasting” on Tuesday 17 October for an end to the fighting started by a terror attack on Israel that killed 1,300 people.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, said: “This is the way we all come together despite everything, and unite collectively in prayer, to deliver to God the Father our thirst for peace, justice and reconciliation.”
The Vatican offered to mediate between Israel and Hamas for the release of hostages in Gaza, then numbered at 199, and to facilitate peace but said the Israeli response to the “inhuman” Hamas attack must respect “proportionality”.
On Monday, Cardinal Pizzaballa said he was willing to exchange himself for Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas and held in Gaza.
Speaking to journalists in Italy he said: “I am ready for an exchange, anything, if this can lead to freedom, to bring the children home…There is total willingness on my part.”
He emphasised, however, that he and his office had not had any direct contact with Hamas, the Islamist group that attacked Israel on 7 October. “You can't talk to Hamas, it is very difficult,” he said.
Speaking during his Angelus address on Sunday, Pope Francis said that God “does not give up” and “never” imposes himself on people. After the address, he said: “I continue to follow with great sorrow what is happening in Israel and Palestine.”
That evening Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, who heads the vicariate of the Diocese of Rome, led a prayer vigil before the icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary Salus Populi Romani, outside the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
De Donatis led the congregation in praying the rosary for peace in the Holy Land. “There are many Jews, Christians, and Muslims who are suffering tremendously in these days, and we ask the Lord to console them,” he said.
In a telephone call to the journalist Henrique Cymerman in Israel, the Pope said he felt “close” to those affected by the war and that some of his colleagues were “undoubtedly” among the many Argentineans who had been victims of the war, although this claim has not been verified.
Francis also called for humanitarian corridors to help those under siege in Gaza, where food and water are in short supply. Authorities in Gaza said earlier this week that at least 2,750 people had been killed by Israeli strikes, a quarter of them children, and nearly 10,000 wounded. Another 1,000 people were missing and believed to be under rubble.
However, the Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen protested to the Vatican at what he said were “unfounded comparisons”, demanding “a clear and unequivocal condemnation of the murderous terrorist actions of Hamas terrorists”.
In Germany, Cardinal Reinhardt Marx of Munich said that the Arab world had failed to condemn the attacks on Israel even though its religion was being used as a tool in the conflict.
“Calling out ‘God is great’ while women and children are being massacred is blasphemy”, he said. When people were divided into first- and second-class human beings, that was “the end of civilisation”.
“One would expect the Arab World quite clearly to condemn Islamist terrorism but few voices in the Arab world are doing that”, Marx observed in a statement on his archdiocesan website on 14 October.
He warned that religion’s rapidly declining significance in society was endangering democracy: “The disappearance of religion in society is dangerous for democracy. Democracy presupposes religion as the basis of our civilisation is the Bible Message that all human beings are equal in dignity. The liberating, universalistic power of the Gospel Message means that Christianity is the religion of the future.”
Christians in Syria were among those praying for peace in the Holy Land. The International Union of Superiors General called on all religious sisters around the world to join their prayers too.
Around 180,000 people attended candlelit prayers for peace in the Holy Land and Ukraine at Fatima last Friday.
Sabeel, the Jerusalem-based ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians, organised an online “Service of Lament” from the Holy Land on 12 October, with more than 500 people taking part.
The former Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah said: “I believe both Israelis and Palestinians are children of God and I believe we cannot remain in the same situation as before – oppressors and oppressed.” He prayed “for the strong and for the weak, and give peace to your land, which you made holy.”
The Anglican priest Dr Naim Ateek reflected that “we still believe that we can live with our Israeli brothers and sisters, but they must recognise our rights, end the illegal occupation, and respect international law.” He noted the spitting at Christians in Jerusalem and at Muslims trying to attend the Al-Aqsa mosque by extremists.
“We will work for a just peace for all the people of our land,” he said.
The victims of the original Hamas offensive included foreign workers, from the US, Argentina, Brazil, Philippines and Thailand, where local churches have expressed their grief.
Ahli Anglican Hospital in Gaza City was hit by a missile last week, but only the building was damaged. There are reports that about 1,000 Christians are sheltering in church buildings in northern Gaza after their homes were destroyed by airstrikes. There are around 200 people sleeping in the Gaza parish’s church hall.
On 12 October Khaled Al-Muhtasibb, a Palestinian student at the Catholic Bethlehem University, was shot and killed by IDF troops in Jerusalem. The vice-rector of the university, Br Peter Bray FSC, said he was “deeply concerned” for its 400 graduates in Gaza.
“There are many people there who do not support Hamas, both Christians and Muslims,” he said. “It was Hamas who orchestrated the attack on Israel, not all the people in Gaza.”
Pax Christi International has issued a statement calling for a ceasefire, “knowing that an escalation in fighting will not resolve the root causes of this relentless cycle of violence but only sow seeds of greater hatred and animosity.”
It offered solidarity to Palestinians who are “living under brutal military occupation or have been subjugated to an inhumane blockade” in Gaza and the West Bank, and joined fellow peace groups in saying that “a new path, one based on nonviolence and adherence to the rules of international law is the only way forward”.
Jewish Voices for Peace said that “the loss of Israeli lives [is] being used by our government to justify the rush to genocide, to provide moral cover for the immoral push for more weapons and more death”.
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