Francis’ final gift to Gaza: Popemobile will be transformed into mobile clinic for children

JERUSALEM (OSV News) — With the declining situation in Gaza always in his heart, in his final months, Pope Francis bequeathed his popemobile to Caritas Jerusalem and directed the agency to turn it into a mobile health station for the children in Gaza.

Preparation of the new health station is to be completed by mid-May, said Peter Brune, secretary general of Caritas Sweden, who together with Caritas Jerusalem’s Anton Asfar developed the idea in February. Upon Asfar’s suggestion, Brune visited Bethlehem in February to view the popemobile that had been stored in Bethlehem since it was used by Pope Francis on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2014.

Pope Francis readily agreed to the idea after Swedish Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Stockholm, Sweden, approached him, Brune told OSV News in a phone interview.

“There is an urgency in the need to help children in Gaza. There has been a full blockage of aid since March 2,” Brune said. “This is not the way we should treat our children.”

When access to food, water and health care is cut off, children are often the first and hardest hit, with infection and other preventable conditions putting their lives at risk, Caritas Sweden and Caritas Jerusalem said in a press release. Brune said in the release that the mobile clinic will be a “concrete, life-saving intervention at a time when the health system in Gaza has almost completely collapsed.”

The vehicle will be staffed by a driver and medical doctors and is currently being fitted with equipment for diagnoses, examination and treatment, including rapid tests for infections, suture kits, syringes and needles, oxygen supply, vaccines and a refrigerator for medicines, and will be ready for use once the humanitarian corridor to Gaza reopens.

“This vehicle represents the love, care and closeness shown by His Holiness for the most vulnerable, which he expressed throughout the crisis,” Asfar said in the press release.

Since the outbreak of the war Pope Francis called the Catholic Holy Family Parish every night and spoke with the parish priests including parish pastor, Father Gabriel Romanelli, to express his support of the parish community sheltering at the compound. In his last “urbi et orbi” blessing on Easter, April 20, the pope called for a ceasefire and the release of the 59 hostages still held by Hamas, up to 24 of who are believed to still be alive, and aid for “a starving people who aspire to a future of peace.”

The main message of the new health mobile is to assure that the children of Gaza are not forgotten, said Brune. The unit will be called “Vehicle of Hope,” he said.

“It will be conveying a message of hope,” he told OSV. “The children will be sitting on the chair of the Holy Father and treated as the miracles that they are. If nothing more symbolically the pope was interested in bringing attention to the situation of the children of Gaza.”

In the meantime Israeli media reported that the Israeli cabinet approved plans which included “conquering of Gaza and holding the territories” as well as a plan for the distribution of humanitarian aid that Israel says would prevent Hamas from controlling its distribution.

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