Israel protests after Vatican official criticizes Gaza ‘carnage’

Pope Francis is seen on a giant screen at St. Peter's square in The Vatican as he delivers the Angelus prayer on December 3, 2023 (Tiziana FABI / AFP)
Pope Francis is seen on a giant screen at St. Peter's square in The Vatican as he delivers the Angelus prayer on December 3, 2023 (Tiziana FABI / AFP)

Israel protests with the Vatican after Pope Francis’s deputy defined what is happening in Gaza as “carnage” resulting from a disproportionate Israeli military response to Hamas.

“It is a deplorable statement. Judging the legitimacy of a war without taking into account all relevant circumstances and data inevitably leads to wrong conclusions,” the Israeli embassy to the Holy See says in a statement.

A day earlier, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin reiterated the “request that Israel’s right to defense, which has been invoked to justify this operation, be proportional, and certainly with 30,000 deaths, it is not.”

“I believe we are all outraged by what is happening, by this carnage, but we must have the courage to move forward and not lose hope,” Parolin says, adding that “we must find other ways to solve the problem of Gaza, the problem of Palestine.”

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