The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 and the Israeli response to it has “plunged” the Holy Land “into a vortex of violence and hatred never seen or experienced before,” Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, wrote in a pastoral letter released on Sept. 26. “The intensity and impact of the tragedies we have witnessed in the past twelve months have deeply lacerated our conscience and our sense of humanity,” he said.
The violence has claimed the lives of thousands of innocent victims, he said, but it also “struck a profound blow to the common feeling of belonging to the Holy Land, to the consciousness of being part of a plan of Providence that wanted us here to build together His Kingdom of peace and justice, and not to make it instead a reservoir of hatred and contempt, of mutual rejection and annihilation.”
The patriarch repeated his “condemnation of this senseless war and what has generated it, calling on everyone to stop this drift of violence, and to have the courage to find other ways of resolving the current conflict, which take into account the demands of justice, dignity and security for all.”
He urged a day of prayer, fasting and penance on Oct. 7, 2024, the first anniversary of the attacks. “We too have a duty to commit ourselves to peace,” Cardinal Pizzaballa said, “first by preserving our hearts from all feelings of hatred, and instead cherishing the desire for good for everyone.”
On the first anniversary of the attack that sparked the escalating conflict across the Holy Land, Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See said his country still hopes for peace.
“No country craves for peace more than Israel,” Ambassador Yaron Sideman told OSV News on Oct. 4. “However, one cannot make peace with a country or a group that calls for your destruction and elimination. One cannot have peace with those who do not recognize your basic, fundamental right to exist as a people and as a state.”
Sideman said he was certain that “when conditions are right,” the Israeli government “will be willing to make further sacrifices for peace, the noblest of goals.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas militants carried out a devastating attack that killed 1,200 people, capturing over 250 hostages. Although over 100 hostages have been released since then, it is unknown how many of those who remain captive are still alive, especially months after Israel declared war on Hamas and the conflict expanded to include Hezbollah, a close ally of Hamas, in neighboring Lebanon.
A statement released on Oct. 7 by the former Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, and members of the Christian Reflection group, offered a grim assessment of conditions across the Holy Land since this most recent conflict began. “The entire region is in the grip of bloodshed that continues to escalate and spares no one. Before our eyes, our beloved Holy Land and the entire region are being reduced to ruins,” the patriarch said.
“Daily, we mourn the tens of thousands of men, women and children who have been killed or wounded especially in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, Israel, Lebanon and beyond in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran,” Patriarch Sabah said. “We are outraged at the devastation wreaked on the area. In Gaza, homes, schools, hospitals, entire neighborhoods are now heaps of rubble. Disease, starvation and hopelessness reign. Is this the model for what our region will become?
“Around us, the economy is in ruins, access to work is blocked and families have difficulty putting food on the table. In Israel too many are in mourning, living in anxiety and fear. There must be another way!”
Patriarch Sabbah has been horrified by the carnage but also by what he described as a shocking passivity to it by the international community. “Calls for ceasefire and an end to the devastation are repeated with no meaningful attempt to reign in those wreaking havoc,” he said. “Weapons of mass destruction and the means to commit crimes against humanity flow into the region.”
“As this all continues, the questions resound: When is this going to end? For how long can we survive like this? What is the future of our children?” How, he asked, should the region’s Christians respond to the continuing violence and injustice?
“Our faith makes us spokespeople for a land without walls, without discrimination, spokespeople for a land of equality and freedom for all, for a future in which we live together,” Patriarch Sabbah wrote.
“We will only know peace when the tragedy of the Palestinian people is brought to an end. Only then will Israelis enjoy security. We need a definitive peace agreement between these two partners and not temporary ceasefires or interim solutions.”
The massive might of the Israel Defense Forces, he said, “can destroy and bring death, it can wipe out political and military leaders and anyone who dares to stand up and oppose occupation and discrimination,” but “it cannot bring the security that Israelis need.”
“The international community must help us by recognizing that the root cause of this war is the negation of the right of the Palestinian people to live in its land, free and equal.”
“Our Catholic faith teaches us to hope even amidst the darkest of circumstances, for Christ is risen from the dead,” Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a letter inviting U.S. bishops to join the Latin Patriarchate’s day of prayer for an end to the violence in the Holy Land. He called on the bishops to seek ways to express solidarity with Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters and commit to combatting all forms of hatred.
The trauma of Oct 7, “the deadliest for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Archbishop Broglio said, “continues for Israelis and for the Jewish community worldwide, who cry out for the return of those still held as hostages and who struggle with the dramatic rise of antisemitic incidents around the world.”
He added that in the ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza, “over 40,000 people, the majority of whom are civilians, are estimated to have been killed.” He also noted attacks on Palestinians civilians on the occupied West Bank and in the United States and around the world increasing incidents of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
“The terrible loss of life in Israel and in Gaza, as well as the spike in crimes of hate…is a source of great sorrow to us as Catholics,” Archbishop Broglio said.
“Compassion is not a zero-sum game,” he said. “We hear the cries of lament of all our brothers and sisters—Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims and Christians—all of whom have been traumatized by these events. We join in mourning all whose lives have been cut short. We share the earnest desire for lasting peace.”
