In his Christmas speech, Pope Francis stated that the Israeli strikes in Gaza were resulting in a “appalling harvest” of innocent civilian deaths and that children dying in wars, including that one, are the “little Jesuses of today”.
In his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and globe) speech on Christmas Day, Pope Francis similarly referred to the attack on Israel on October 7 by Hamas militants as “abominable.”
Taking aim at the armaments business once again, he said that it ultimately controlled the “puppet strings of war” while addressing thousands of people in the square below from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Celebrating his 11th Christmas as pope, the 87-year-old pontiff demanded a stop to political, social, and military crises in a number of countries, including Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. He also stood up for the rights of migrants everywhere.
“How many innocents are being slaughtered in our world? In their mothers’ wombs, in odysseys undertaken in desperation and in search of hope, and in the lives of all those little ones whose childhood has been devastated by war. They are the little Jesuses of today,” he said, reports RTE.
“May it (peace) come in Israel and Palestine, where war is devastating the lives of those peoples. I embrace them all, particularly the Christian communities of Gaza and the entire Holy Land,” Francis added, reports RTE.
“I plead for an end to the military operations with their appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims, and call for a solution to the desperate humanitarian situation by an opening to the provision of humanitarian aid,” he added, reports RTE.
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