Irish Church prays for Gaza as Israel plans offensive

‘This is a moment for our nation to radiate the light of Christ into the darkness, a light of peace, of justice and of hope for our world,’ said Archbishop Eamon Martin.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland asked parishes to pray for the people of Gaza on Sunday.

Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, the Primate of All-Ireland, said 24 August would be “a day of prayer and reflection for Gaza and for a renewed commitment by the international community for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East”.

This followed the Irish bishops’ dedication of the month of June “to prayer for, and solidarity with, the suffering people of Gaza”.

“Heartbreakingly, since then, the situation has deteriorated further,” said Archbishop Martin on Tuesday. “Innocent lives continue to be lost, many of them children and families, while hunger, violence and devastation tighten their grip on a people caught in the crossfire.”

He reiterated the Irish bishops’ condemnation of “the genocidal acts being carried out with the sanction of the Israeli government, actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of civilians”, as well as the “suffering of hostages held by Hamas and the cruel withholding of their remains from their families”.

The archbishop referred to his pastoral letter to the dioceses of Armagh and Dromore on 1 August, in which he urged parishes to show solidarity “by lobbying your political representatives, supporting humanitarian aid and, above all, by continuing to pray for an end to the conflict and the resumption of peace, including the return of all hostages and prisoners”.

“This is a moment for our nation to radiate the light of Christ into the darkness, a light of peace, of justice and of hope for our world,” he said in his statement on Tuesday. “Let us stand together, as one body in Christ, for the people of Gaza and for all who long for a just and lasting peace in the Holy Land.”

Archbishop Martin made his appeal as Israel continued preparations for an offensive to occupy Gaza City in the coming weeks, while ceasefire negotiations again seemed to stall. The parish priest of the only Catholic church in Gaza denied reports that his parish was subject to an evacuation order ahead of the offensive.

“The area is very dangerous,” Fr Gabriel Romanelli IVE told Vatican News on Tuesday. “Bombings can be heard night and day. Some far away, others closer. At times, even shrapnel arrives.”

However, he said that local evacuation orders reported by Italian outlets did not affect the neighbourhood of his Holy Family Parish, in the Zaytoun district of the Old City of Gaza.

He had told reporters on Monday that while the Israeli authorities issued evacuation orders and distributed tents for those forced to relocate, some supplies had reached the parish. Yet strikes continue and medical supplies are scarce, he said.

Three people sheltering in the parish compound died after an Israeli strike hit the church on 17 July, in which several others were injured. The deaths of Saad Issa Kostandi Salameh, Foumia Issa Latif Ayyad and Najwa Ibrahim Latif Abu Daoud were attributed to a severe shortage of medical supplies.

On the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation, the Archbishop of Bologna Cardinal Matteo Zuppi led a prayer vigil where speakers read out the names of every child killed in the war in the Holy Land since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Cardinal Zuppi, the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, joined other members of his diocese to read, over several hours, the names of the 16 Israeli children and 12,211 Palestinian children who had died up to 25 July, based on information from the Israeli government and the Gaza health ministry. The vigil took place in the park of Monte Sole di Marzabotto, in the ruins of a church burned in 1944 during Nazi reprisals that killed more than 1,800 people.

Zuppi said the names of the children of the Holy Land “ask us all to commit ourselves to finding or pursuing the path to peace with greater intelligence and passion, starting with a ceasefire and offering the conditions for doing so, from the release of hostages to not taking an entire people hostage”.

Preaching on the Feast of the Assumption, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa warned that the evil responsible for the war “will not cease to operate” with the end of hostilities but cause further pain through the “worldly power that really seems to reign on this earth and in this time”.

“There will still be a desire for revenge and anger in the hearts of many people,” he said. “It really does seem that our Holy Land, which houses the highest revelation and manifestation of God, is also the place of the highest manifestation of Satan’s power.”

The patriarch said the feast day reading from the Book of Revelation, where the woman and her child escape the seven-headed dragon, showed that evil “cannot triumph over the seed of life, the fruit of love”.

He said that even after the fighting stopped, the Church must not “follow the logic that accompanies so much of the life of the powerful” but “become a refuge for those who want to preserve the seed of life, in all its forms”.

At his general audience on Wednesday, Pope Leo asked Catholics to mark the Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 22 August with prayer and fasting, “imploring the Lord to grant us peace and justice, and to wipe away the tears of those who suffer because of ongoing armed conflicts” in the Holy Land, Ukraine and elsewhere.

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