Pope Francis, who died on April 21, was a uncommon beacon of hope for a lot of Palestinians within the lengthy months of the Gaza genocide. The pope refused to be silent on Gaza. For 18 months, he made almost daily video calls in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, together with current calls he produced from his hospital bed. He rang the Holy Household Church in Gaza Metropolis each evening, talking with church leaders and displaced Palestinians sheltering there, normally for about quarter-hour.
Pope Francis started one among his most memorable calls to parishioners in Gaza earlier this 12 months by saying “As-salaam Alaikum” (“Peace be upon you”). The video of that decision confirmed his intimate relationship with the small Palestinian Christian neighborhood that continues to be in Gaza, lots of whom he got here to know by identify. His final call to the Gaza Strip, made two days earlier than his dying, lasted 30 seconds.
For a lot of in Gaza, these telephone calls had been a ray of sunshine that shone via the horrors of Israeli genocide, which has killed over 51,000 Palestinians, most of them girls and youngsters. “His Holiness the pope was not an peculiar particular person,” Musa Antone, a Christian resident of Gaza, advised CNN. “He was a person of religion who inquired about each Christians and Muslims.”
The surviving Christian neighborhood in Gaza now mourns Francis’s loss. “We felt like ‘Oh my God, we’re like orphans now,’” lamented George Anton, a neighborhood Catholic, and the emergency coordinator within the Holy Household church. “He was a real father to us. Pope Francis was like a defend for the Christians within the enclave. He was the fighter. He was combating for our rights and for our safety.”
Kamal Anton, a 72-year-old who had taken shelter on the church amid the genocide, said: “Throughout his name, he prayed for peace and resilience for us in Gaza. He by no means forgot the phrase ‘peace’ in any of his calls with us all through the warfare. His help included all of us — Christians and Muslims alike. He prayed day by day for our security.”
In a tribute to the late pope, Palestinian theologian Munther Isaac wrote Monday: “He conveyed true compassion to Palestinians, most notably to these in Gaza throughout this genocide. The pope left our world as we speak, and the occupation and the wall remained. Even worse, he left our world whereas a genocide continues to unfold.”
Pope Francis’s final public look was a plea to finish the warfare in Gaza. In an Easter message at some point earlier than his dying, the pope, visibly very sick, renewed his name for a ceasefire in Gaza, which he had repeated on several occasions all through the continued genocide.
“I consider the folks of Gaza, and its Christian neighborhood specifically, the place the horrible battle continues to trigger dying and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian scenario,” the message mentioned. “I attraction to the fighters: Name a ceasefire, launch the hostages and are available to the help of a ravenous folks that aspires to a way forward for peace!”
The pope’s attraction on Sunday got here shortly after Israel slaughtered over 100 Palestinians throughout Gaza, together with the tent camp of al-Mawasi, the place displaced households and youngsters had been burned alive.
The attraction culminated Francis’s months-long antiwar legacy in Gaza. In 2024, the pope wrote that, “what is going on in Gaza has the traits of a genocide,” whereas calling for a world investigation. He known as Israel’s genocide in Gaza “shameful,” “deplorable” and a “ineffective slaughter” of civilians. He additionally labeled Israel’s massacres of civilians in Gaza “terrorism.” In December, after an Israeli strike in Gaza killed Palestinian kids, he said: “Youngsters have been bombed. That is cruelty. This isn’t warfare. I wished to say this as a result of it touches the center.”
Final Christmas, in a daring symbolic gesture towards genocide, Francis unveiled a Nativity scene portraying baby Jesus in a crib lined with a Palestinian Keffiyeh, which was seemingly impressed by Palestinian Rev. Munther Isaac’s iconic “Christ in the Rubble” Christmas sermon in Bethlehem.
Pope Francis’s help for the Palestinian folks was not merely humanitarian; he additionally unequivocally acknowledged Palestinian independence and freedom. Ten years in the past, when he visited Bethlehem, widely known because the birthplace of Jesus, he referred to the land as “the State of Palestine.” Shortly after, the Vatican signed a treaty recognizing the State of Palestine. “Sure, it’s a recognition that the state exists,” affirmed Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.
Pope Francis’s unwavering solidarity with Gaza stood in sharp distinction with the shameful complicity of the Western political class. “This marketing campaign has made Pope Francis arguably probably the most constant high-profile defender of the humanity of the Palestinian folks throughout a interval when the Israeli assault on Gaza has been pursued with relentless violence,” wrote John Nichols in The Nation.
Like his expressions of solidarity with the folks of Gaza, Francis’s statements on immigration had been a public rebuke to the Trump administration. The pope, who known as President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants a “shame,” rejected Vice President J.D. Vance’s tried appropriation of medieval-era Catholic teachings to justify Trump’s deportation marketing campaign. When Vance tried to interpret a sure Christian theology as saying that you need to take care of these closest to you earlier than you are concerned about these overseas, the pope penned a rare open letter to U.S. bishops, saying: “No, it’s worthwhile to take into consideration everybody.” (The pope’s final message on Gaza was a becoming prelude to his transient assembly with Vance on Sunday, who was among the many final to go to the pontiff.)
Francis’s unwavering help for migrants towards the backdrop of mounting anti-immigrant sentiment within the U.S. and Europe positioned him within the crosshairs of far proper populists like Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei, who known as Francis a “filthy leftist.” Trump has fallen short of honoring the pope.
In a transfer that has caused some controversy within Israel, based on the Israeli information web site Ynet, the overseas ministry in Israel sought to forestall its ambassadors from expressing condolences following the pope’s passing. Center East Eye stories: “With out offering an evidence, the ministry instructed its missions and diplomats to delete any social media posts mourning the previous pope, based on Yedioth Ahronoth” (a serious Israeli newspaper). In the meantime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waited greater than three days after Pope Francis’s dying earlier than lastly providing his personal condolences on Thursday, following backlash over the overseas ministry’s deletion of condolence tweets.
Definitely, Francis’s broad antiwar imaginative and prescient, which made him a champion of nuclear disarmament who opposed and denounced nuclear weapons as “immoral,” didn’t endear him to warmongers.
In remembering Pope Francis’s ethical management in critiquing the genocide and advocating for the rights of immigrants, nevertheless, it is necessary to not erase the areas during which the pope didn’t help pressing change on different social points. He fell wanting affirming same-sex marriage, supporting trans rights, lobbying for ordaining girls as clergymen, or sparking elementary reforms on clerical sexual abuses within the Catholic Church. In consequence, some critics have argued that Francis was “at coronary heart a conservative,” regardless of the substantive methods during which he was extra progressive than his predecessor.
Amid pressing considerations concerning the ongoing genocide in Gaza and rising assaults on the LGBTQ neighborhood within the U.S. and past, Palestinians and progressive supporters of the church are nervously awaiting information about who the pope’s successor can be.
One notable candidate to switch Pope Francis is the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a longtime advocate for the Christian minority within the Holy Land.
Cardinal Pizzaballa has praised the late pope’s ethical readability on Gaza, saying:
Battle isn’t just weapons. Battle is typically phrases. Pope Francis just lately, particularly within the final 12 months, has been very outspoken concerning the scenario of the Holy Land, calling for the liberation of the hostages, but additionally condemning the dramatic scenario, the continued warfare in Gaza and the scenario for Palestinians.
Cardinal Pizzaballa, an Italian Franciscan prelate, is the highest Catholic within the Center East with an archdiocese encompassing Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Cyprus. He has appealed for peace from either side, and led a Christmas mass each in Gaza and Jerusalem. The cardinal, who visited Gaza in Might 2024 after months of ceasefire negotiations, almost one 12 months after he provided to be exchanged for Gaza hostages, could be anticipated to proceed some points of Francis’s management of the church, although he has publicly distanced himself from social points which might be extra controversial inside Catholicism, comparable to gender id and homosexual marriage.
Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson and Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah — two different papal candidates — are additionally firmly conservative on problems with gender and sexual id/orientation.
Cardinal Turkson, who was delivered to the Vatican by Francis’s conservative predecessor, is greatest identified outdoors of Vatican circles for his anti-LGBTQ views, having mentioned: “We’re not but prepared to simply accept stuff like that.” Nonetheless, he has been vocal on points comparable to local weather disaster, poverty and financial justice.
Cardinal Sarah, who has branded himself as a “parallel authority” to Pope Francis, has defended clerical celibacy, denounced “gender ideology,” and refused any “theological dialogue” with Islam –– a stark departure from the late pontiff’s legacy, who made notable progress in interfaith relations, notably with Muslims. As Katherine Kelaidis writes at Vox, it’s necessary to notice that “thousands and thousands of {dollars} have been spent pushing a conservative social agenda in Africa” — a dynamic at play within the rise of socially conservative church leaders like Cardinal Sarah.
One of many extra progressive candidates is Cardinal José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça from Portugal, who holds comparatively liberal views on same-sex relationships, and aligns himself with a feminist Benedictine sister who helps girls’s ordination and abortion rights. In accordance with the College of Cardinals Report website: “Tolentino has attracted appreciable controversy throughout his priestly life, specifically for sympathizing with heterodox and tolerant approaches to homosexuality (though by no means publicly talking towards Church instructing on this space) and allying himself with a radical feminist Benedictine sister who promotes abortion, girls’s ordination, same-sex “marriage,” and the adoption of children by same-sex couples.”
One other extra progressive candidate is Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, who hails from the Philippines. Described by some commentators as “Asian Francis,” the Filipino prelate has been praised for his dedication to social justice and equality, notably for marginalized teams like LGBTQ folks and the poor, although he concurrently maintains a hardline anti-abortion stance.
In an op-ed for America, a month-to-month Jesuit journal, Cardinal Tagle wrote: “In an interconnected world, world points comparable to local weather change, poverty and the persecution of ethnic and spiritual minorities name on us to work collectively.” The U.S.-based LGBTQ journal Them describes how Tagle “reportedly led a Catholic social media initiative for Easter within the Philippines … to name for LGBTQ+ acceptance in church buildings. In 2019, Tagle called on Catholic youth to cease discriminating towards or “labeling” LGBTQ+ folks. Nonetheless, like many of the candidates, Cardinal Tagle’s views on the Gaza genocide stay to be seen.
In the meantime, Raymond Burke, the Wisconsin-born cardinal, and Trump’s favourite candidate — a rabid Islamophobe who is very conservative and clashed with Pope Francis on points starting from LGBTQ rights and the position of girls within the church, to immigration — is completely positioned to turn into Trump’s papal puppet within the Vatican if he’s chosen.
Pope Francis’s daring political stance on Palestine will put to the check the apolitical and eerie silence amongst his progressive successors, few of whom have expressed substantial views on Palestine. One of many few who’ve achieved so is Matteo Zuppi, the cardinal from Bologna, who was Francis’s peace envoy between Russia and Ukraine, and has labored extensively to dealer peace there. He been outspoken within the wake of October 7, calling for peace, urging the necessity to perceive the “root causes” of the battle. He additionally called Hamas “the worst enemy of the Palestinian folks.” He visited Bethlehem, known as for a ceasefire, and highlighted the struggling of Palestinian kids.
The opposite candidate who has publicly expressed a view on Palestine is Pietro Parolin,the primary particular person Francis made a cardinal, in 2014. As secretary of state, he was involved within the George W. Bush administration’s makes an attempt to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. He argued towards deportation of Palestinians in Gaza in a rebuke to Trump’s plan, urged for lasting peace in Gaza and known as for respect for humanitarian law. However he’s hardly a liberal, particularly on same-sex marriage, Church reforms and immigration, which he has blamed for “deep malaise” in Europe.
A lot of the different candidates have rarely addressed Palestine, save for basic allusions to peace. The problems of Palestine, social justice and immigration are inexorably linked, and plenty of Palestine solidarity activists are hoping that the following pope is not going to overlook that justice must be complete and never selective or partial.
Pope Francis, the primary Latin American pontiff, introduced a restricted but desperately wanted progressive spirit to the Catholic Church. For all his reluctance to result in church reforms on social points, he’ll nonetheless go down as a logo of a extra compassionate and tolerant Christianity; a steadfast voice of peace and opponent of genocide; and a defender of the oppressed in Gaza, immigrants and the poor. Judging from the record of potential candidates, a transfer rightward appears seemingly.
Greater than something, Pope Francis’s unwavering humanity can be missed. To quote a few of his last words: “Might the precept of humanity by no means fail to be the hallmark of our day by day actions. Within the face of the cruelty of conflicts that contain defenseless civilians and assault faculties, hospitals and humanitarian employees, we can not permit ourselves to overlook that it isn’t targets which might be struck, however individuals, every possessed of a soul and human dignity.”
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