Pope Francis to meet Mahmoud Abbas in Vatican on Thursday
Visit comes amid series of controversies surrounding pontiff’s rhetoric around Israel-Hamas war, and days after dedication of nativity scene showing Jesus laid on keffiyeh
Pope Francis will meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday during the latter’s trip to Italy, the Vatican said in a planning note on Tuesday.
Abbas is traveling this week to Italy, where he is expected also to meet with Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Francis and Abbas have met several times in the past.
The announcement came amid a series of controversies over the pope’s rhetoric about Israel, more than a year into the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack against the Jewish state.
It also came just days after the pontiff raised eyebrows when he attended the dedication of a Palestinian-sponsored nativity scene depicting a baby Jesus laid on a keffiyeh.
Though the pope has met with the families of those taken hostage by Hamas during its attack, and called for their release, Jewish and Israeli leaders have accused him of lacking moral clarity in his statements about the war.
In November, Francis called for Israel’s campaign against Hamas to be investigated as a potential genocide — a characterization that Israel strenuously rejects, citing efforts to avoid civilian casualties, as well as the terror group’s systematic use of human shields.
And in a letter to Middle Eastern Catholics on the first anniversary of the Hamas attack, the pope never explicitly mentioned the terror group or its atrocities, and quoted passages from the Gospel of John that have historically been used to fuel religious antisemitism.
