Pope calls Gaza airstrikes ‘cruelty’ after Israeli minister’s criticism

Vatican City: Pope Francis on Sunday (AEDT) again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Francis opened his annual Christmas address to Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.

Pope Francis has addressed Catholic cardinals ahead of Christmas.Credit: AP

“Yesterday, children were bombed,” the Pope said. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”

As leader of the 1.4-billion-member Catholic Church, the Pope is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In book excerpts published last month, he said some international experts had said “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide”.

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli criticised those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the Pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialisation” of the term genocide.

Israel’s foreign ministry said Israel was defending itself against the cruelty exemplified by Hamas militants “hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children”, holding 100 hostages and abusing them.

“Unfortunately, the Pope has chosen to ignore all of this,” the ministry said, adding that the “death of any innocent person in a war is a tragedy”.

“Israel makes extraordinary efforts to prevent harm to innocents, while Hamas makes extraordinary efforts to increase harm to Palestinian civilians,” it said.

Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there but was denied entry.

The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was unable to comment on the Pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.

The Israeli military said on Saturday the patriarch’s entry had been approved and he would enter Gaza on Sunday, barring major security issues. Aid from the patriarch’s office entered last week, the military said.

Israel allows clerics to enter Gaza and “works in co-operation with the Christian community to make it easier for the Christian population that remains in the Gaza Strip – including co-ordinating its removal from the Gaza Strip to a third country”, a statement from the military said.

The war began when Hamas-led Palestinian militants attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing 1200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign, which it says is aimed at eliminating Hamas, has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, say authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.

Israel says at least a third of the dead have been militants and it tries to avoid harm to civilians but is battling militants who it accuses of embedding among the population in dense urban areas. Hamas rejects this.

Reuters