Pope Francis has held nightly phone calls with Gaza’s Christians as they try to survive Israel’s ongoing military campaign during Christmas.
The nearly 15-month-long campaign has devastated the besieged territory and threatens to completely wipe out the area’s Christian heritage.
The pontiff has been in regular contact with Palestinians in the region as the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics becomes more open with his criticism of Israel.
In his Christmas address last week, the pontiff condemned the killing of children in Gaza by Israel as “cruelty”.
“Yesterday, children have been bombed. This is cruelty; this is not war,” he said.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on
Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
Earlier this year, he told the CBS network’s 60 Minutes: “I speak every night at seven to the Gaza parish… They tell me about what happens there. It’s very tough, very tough… Sometimes, they go hungry, and they tell me things. There is a lot of suffering.”
Israel dismissed the pope’s remarks as “particularly disappointing”, with a foreign ministry spokesperson accusing him of “double standards” and claiming his comments ignored the “fight against jihadist terrorism”.
The spokesperson further criticised the “singling out of the Jewish state and its people”.
More than a year into Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, for which it faces charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the besieged Christian community in the enclave continues to struggle for survival.
Many have sought refuge within the ancient walls of St Porphyrius, a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City, where an Israeli air strike last year devastated families, including one father who lost all three of his children.
With fewer than 1,000 Christians remaining in Gaza, most currently live in either the Holy Family Church or St Porphyrius.
These two churches are the last sanctuaries for Christians in the war-torn territory.
“Here in Palestine, we live under the harshest and most difficult conditions. Bethlehem is besieged. Jerusalem is wounded. And Gaza is being annihilated. This year, we say, Christ is still under the rubble in Gaza,” said Munther Isaac, a Palestinian Christian pastor and theologian, in a post on X.
Grim future
Israel’s ongoing campaign has devastated much of Gaza’s infrastructure, placing the territory’s 2,000-year-old Christian heritage in grave danger.
The community faces a grim future, threatened not only with physical destruction but also with the erasure of its cultural legacy.
Amid the sounds of war and the hardships of daily life in Gaza, Christian rituals emerge as a message of hope and steadfast faith. Witness how people cling to their spirituality and traditions in the darkest of times. Faith unites hearts and grants the strength to persevere.
وسط… pic.twitter.com/fsZliWqXXg
— حسام شبات (@HossamShabat) December 24, 2024
The number of Christians sheltering in Gaza’s churches has dwindled this year, with many fleeing through the Rafah crossing into Egypt before Israel seized control of it on 6 May.
Those left behind – around 650 people – are enduring dire conditions and are on the brink of annihilation, said George Akroush, an official at the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, speaking to the Financial Times.
Israel’s grip on the Rafah crossing has cut off one of the last lifelines for Gaza’s besieged population, further isolating its already struggling Christian minority.
Of the meagre 34 trucks carrying food and water that Israel allowed into the North Gaza governorate over the past two and a half months, only 12 successfully delivered aid to starving civilians, according to aid workers.
Deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by Israeli forces were cited as the main reasons for the failures.
Humanitarian organisations, including Oxfam, have repeatedly condemned Israel’s restrictions, accusing the military of deliberately preventing the delivery of life-saving aid.
Since 6 October, when Israel intensified its siege on Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, relief efforts in the North Gaza governorate have reduced to a trickle, dependent on limited pre-existing stockpiles.
The death toll from Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza has reached 45,400, with at least 107,713 wounded, according to the latest figures from the Palestinian health ministry.
