Conflict in the Middle East

Ten children from Gaza in need of medical attention arrived in Rome on a military plane late Jan. 29, the first group of young patients who will receive treatment in Italy thanks to the lobbying of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land and negotiations involving the governments of Italy, Israel, Palestine and Egypt.

The situation in the Gaza Strip is “extremely catastrophic,” and people are dying not only from violence but from preventable illnesses, said the CEO of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Cardinal Fernando Filoni, grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, an ancient chivalric order of the Catholic Church rooted in the Holy Land, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a sign of peace and dialogue during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

As the world marked 100 days since the Hamas militants attacks that unleashed hell in the Holy Land, images of the children from Holy Family Parish — the only Catholic parish in the Gaza Strip — dressed in white albs to receive the sacrament were a stark and welcome contrast in a land that has had little reason to smile since Oct. 7.

As U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has insisted that Palestinians must not be pressured into leaving Gaza and must be allowed to return to their homes once conditions allow, Christians in the Holy Land worry the Israeli statements may threaten other small communities in the Holy Land, including theirs.

With more than 22,100 deaths and 57,000 injured as reported by Jan. 2 by Gaza’s Ministry of Health, the question is being asked: Can Israel’s conflict conduct be considered a “just war” under the Catholic understanding of the concept?