Pope laments ‘painful’ end of truce, calls for release of hostages and improvement to Gazans’ lives

An ailing Pope Francis addresses the war between Israel and Hamas.

“Dear brothers and sisters, good day. Also today, I won’t be able to read everything. I’m getting better, but the voice still isn’t strong enough to read everything,” Francis says, before passing the microphone to a priest to read prepared remarks.

“It’s painful that the truce has been broken,” Francis says in the remarks read by the priest. ”That means death, destruction and misery.”

He calls for the release of the remaining hostages who were kidnapped from Israel in the Hamas Oct. 7 onslaught.

“Many hostages have been freed but so many others are still in Gaza,” he says.

The pope also laments the lack of basic necessities of life in Gaza amid the subsequent war triggered by the terror group’s attack.

“There is so much suffering in Gaza,” he says.

Last week saw a pause in fighting as well as the release of some of the hostages held by terrorists in Gaza. The truce ended on Friday when Hamas violated the terms by firing rockets toward Israel and failing to hand over a list of names of hostages to be released under the terms of the agreement.

The comments come days after the Washington Post reported that Pope Francis held a tense phone call with President Isaac Herzog last month in which he appeared to categorize Israel’s military operations against the Hamas terror group in Gaza as “terrorism,” citing an unnamed senior Israeli official familiar with the call.