Cardinal urges day of prayer, penance on anniversary of Oct. 7 attack, start of Israel-Hamas war

JERUSALEM (OSV News) — Oct. 7 will mark a year since the brutal Hamas attack on Israeli communities and the no less brutal Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that immediately followed.

The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem asked for a day of prayer, fasting and penance to mark “a date that has become symbolic of the drama we are experiencing.”

In a Sept. 26 letter to his diocese, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa said the region “plunged into a vortex of violence and hatred never seen or experienced before” as Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern communities, taking almost 250 people hostage Oct. 7, 2023. In the subsequent Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, at least 41,467 people, including nearly 16,500 children, have been killed to date, its health ministry said.

“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,” the cardinal said.

Violence in the region, the patriarch said, has caused not only “thousands of innocent victims” but also influenced social patterns.

“It has 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,” he wrote.

He said the patriarchate repeatedly condemned “this senseless war” in the recent months “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.”

Explaining the need of the day of prayer, fasting and penance, the cardinal said that “we need to pray, to bring our pain and our desire for peace to God. We need to convert, to do penance, and to implore forgiveness.”

He reminded that the month of October “is also the Marian month and on October 7 we celebrate the memory of Mary Queen of the Rosary.” He invited everyone to pray the rosary “or in whatever form he or she sees fit, personally but better again in community, find a moment to pause and pray.”

The day before he issued the letter he was a guest in Fulda where the German bishops’ conference had its plenary meeting.

The German Catholic news agency KNA reported that Cardinal Pizzaballa was skeptical about the negotiations for the release of hostages who were taken by Hamas during the attack on Israel. Ninety-seven people are still believed to be in the hands of Hamas. Three of seven American citizens among them are believed to be dead, NBC News reported Sept. 23.

“The signs of a successful conclusion to the negotiations are very weak. That is why we believe — and we hope we are wrong — that the end of the conflict is not yet in sight and that we will have to deal with this terrible situation for a long time to come,” Cardinal Pizzaballa told the German bishops.

A cease-fire deal most likely to bring the hostages out alive and end the soaring death toll among Palestinians has remained elusive.

Instead of ceasing, the war has intensified on the north front, since the escalation of Israeli strikes on Lebanon.

Since Sept. 23, Israeli strikes have killed more than 630 people in Lebanon, according to local health authorities, who said around a quarter were women and children. Several people in Israel have been wounded by shrapnel.

On Sept. 26, an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon hit a building housing Syrian workers and their families, killing 23 people, Lebanese officials said. It was one of the deadliest single strikes in an intensified air campaign against the militant Hezbollah group, The Associated Press reported.

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