Last week, Israel attacked the Catholic church in Gaza, killing 3 Palestinians and wounding many, including Father Gabriel Romanelli, who used to receive a daily call from the late Pope Francis.
At the time of the attack, the Catholic church was sheltering around 600 Palestinians elderly and children, seeking safety from Israel’s livestreamed genocide.
St Porphyrius, the world’s third oldest church and a shelter for displaced Palestinians, was already bombed by Israel in October 2023, killing at least 16 people. Israel’s impunity fueled new attacks on churches and Gaza’s 4,000-year-old heritage.
In response to Israel’s deadly attack, Pope Leo XIV said he is “deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life and injury caused by the military attack.” He expressed “his profound hope for dialogue, reconciliation and enduring peace in the region,” failing to identify the victims as Christian Palestinians and the perpetrators as the Israeli occupation forces, let alone to condemn what the ICJ determined in January 2024 was a “plausible” Israeli genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.
In sharp contrast, Pope Francis had recognized that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” joining much of humanity that had named and condemned Israel’s genocide. He also told a Palestinian delegation, “I see the genocide,” a remark that was later officially denied by the Vatican bureaucracy.
We cannot expect less from any religious leader.
In June, the World Council of Churches (WCC), representing over 580 million Christians, denounced Israel’s apartheid regime and and its crimes in Gaza, which “may constitute genocide,” and called for sanctions and accountability.
The WCC called on “states, churches, and international institutions to impose consequences for violations of international law, including targeted sanctions, divestment, and arms embargoes.”
It also called for supporting “the International Criminal Court and UN mechanisms investigating potential war crimes and crimes against humanity” and urged all states “to comply with the ICJ’s rulings.”
Israel’s state-sanctioned anti-Christian racism, or Christianophobia, is an important dimension of its regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid against Palestinians that has largely escaped scrutiny or even coverage in the mainstream media, even in the predominantly Christian Western world.
The BDS movement published in 2023 a report detailing attacks on Christian churches, priests and cemeteries across historic Palestine. It stated: “The only Christians largely exempted from these racist attacks are evangelical Christian Zionists who are deeply antisemitic yet strongly allied with Israel’s far-right leadership.”
“Death to the Christians” is one of the main calls in Christianophobic attacks on Palestinian Christians and their holy places.
Millions globally are waging a fierce struggle to end the genocide and hold Israel and its partners (US, EU, and UK mainly) accountable for it. Faith leaders must step up to this moment.
People of all faiths must pressure their faith and political leaders to take concrete action to end any form of complicity in Israel’s genocide, apartheid and other atrocities.
Let’s escalate BDS pressure on governments to impose effective lawful sanctions on Israel (military, energy, trade, academic, financial, etc.) to end this US-Israeli genocide and to help dismantle Israel’s 77-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid against Indigenous Palestinians.