Pope Francis reflected on the devastating consequences of the Gaza war in an address at the Vatican on Saturday, expressing deep sorrow over the bombing of children in the Gaza Strip the previous day.
“This is cruelty. This is not war. I want to say this because it touches the heart,” said the visibly moved pontiff, who leads the Catholic Church’s 1.4 billion members worldwide.
Israel described the pope’s words as “disappointing”, asserting that the pontiff ignored the fact that Israel is engaged in a multi-front war which has been imposed on it.
The pope also noted that Israeli airstrikes had prevented Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the highest representative of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, from entering Gaza.
“Yesterday, the patriarch was not allowed into Gaza, as they had promised,” he told members of the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s central administration.
On Friday during an interview, Pope Francis described the Gaza war as involving “criminal acts,” also drawing parallels to the war in Ukraine.
He criticized actions in both conflicts that defy the rules of conventional warfare, calling them “not warfare, but criminal acts,” according to the Vatican News portal.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused Francis of directing the accusation of cruelty at the wrong target.
“Cruelty is when terrorists hide behind children while attempting to murder Israeli children; cruelty is when 100 hostages, including a baby and children, are held and mistreated by terrorists for 442 days,” Saar said.
Since October 2023, Israel has been fighting against the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza, where, according to Palestinian figures, more than 45,100 people have been killed so far.
The war was triggered by the massacre of 1,200 people and the abduction of around 250 hostages on October 7, 2023 in Israel by Palestinian militants and other groups from the coastal strip.
