Before Oct. 7, 2023, Aviv Lapid described where she lived in Israel as being just a five-minute run from the Gaza Strip. Two years later, Lapid now refers to the space as “the distance between Hamas terrorists and my house.” Lapid told her story at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County on Oct. 5 during a commemoration ceremony marking two years since the Hamas attacks.
As tens of thousands of Palestinians were fleeing their homes as Israel launched a major new ground offensive in Gaza City, Pope Leo XIV expressed his “profound closeness to the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
The parish priest of Gaza Strip’s small Christian community spoke to Vatican Radio amid tragedy after tragedy unfolding in the enclave, with at least 32 people killed by Israeli strikes only on July 13, including six children at a water collection point.
For the second year in a row, few foreign pilgrims were in attendance at the traditional Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives into the Old City of Jerusalem due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
by Elise Ann Allen (Crux) As a ceasefire agreement to the war in Gaza took effect, Pope Francis praised the milestone, voicing hope that authorities can achieve a lasting peace and advocating for a two-state solution. During his Jan. 19, Sunday Angelus address, Pope Francis made the Vatican’s first public statement about the Gaza ceasefire […]
“You have your Lebanon and its dilemma. I have my Lebanon and its beauty.” Those prophetic words were written by Kahlil Gibran in the 1920s, and some believe they may be truer today than ever before.
As the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel approached, there was a sense of calm at Columbia University — a sharp contrast to last spring, when protests rocked the campus and led the university’s president to resign. Now, with the start of Israel’s incursion into Lebanon and Iran’s subsequent missile attack on Israel, there is concern that the campus could once again see protests. Members of the Columbia University community, however, don’t expect any new demonstrations to reach the same scale as those last spring, according to Father Roger Landry, the university’s Catholic chaplain.
With Israel and Hamas still unable to reach a deal to free hostages and halt their war, Catholic leaders in the northwest United States are calling for an agreement between the sides, as well as for them to negotiate a two-state solution for lasting peace.
While conceding it’s not “realistic” to expect peace anytime soon, the top Catholic official in the Holy Land nevertheless has called for an immediate cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and for real progress toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Following the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem’s denouncement of a series of attacks on Christians in Gaza by Israeli forces Dec. 16, including the killing of a mother and daughter at a Catholic parish, Pope Francis and numerous bishops across the globe also condemned the attack, calling for peace.
