From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
‘An important legacy’: Jerusalem patriarch hails pope’s commitment to Gaza
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The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, hails Pope Francis’s support for Gazans and engagement with the small Catholic community in the war-battered Palestinian enclave.
The Catholic church’s highest authority in the region, who is considered a potential successor to the late pontiff, Pizzaballa told journalists in Jerusalem that “Gaza represents, a little bit, all what was the heart of his pontificate.”
Pope Francis, who died on Monday aged 88, advocated peace and “closeness to the poor… and to the neglected one,” says the patriarch.
These positions became particularly evident in Francis’s response to the Israel-Hamas war — which erupted on October 7, 2023, with the deadly Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel — Pizzaballa says.
“He was very close to the community of Gaza, the parish of Gaza, he kept calling them many times — for a certain period, also every day, every evening at 7 p.m.,” says the patriarch.
He adds that by doing so, the pope “became for the community something stable, and also comforting for them, and he knew this.”
“Work for justice… but without becoming part of the conflict,” says Pizzaballa of the late pontiff’s actions. “For us, for the Church, it leaves an important legacy.”
Out of the Gaza Strip’s roughly 2.4 million people, about 1,000 are Christians. Most of them are Orthodox, but according to the Latin Patriarchate, there are about 135 Catholics in the territory.
Since the early days of the war, members of the Catholic community have been sheltering at Holy Family Church compound in Gaza City, and some Orthodox Christians have also found refuge there.
The patriarch also thanks the numerous Palestinian and Israeli public figures who have offered their condolences, preferring not to comment on the lack of any official message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Even as “the local authorities… were not always happy” with the pope’s positions or statements, they were “always very respectful,” he says, appearing to refer to instances in which the pope’s comments on the Gaza war led Israel to issue sharp rebukes.
Pizzaballa says he will travel to Rome on Wednesday, after leading a requiem mass for the pope at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in the morning.
The Times of Israel Community.