- “How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?” the pope asked
- Sarah Mullally warned during Christmas sermon that national conversations over immigration were dividing British society
VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo decried conditions for Palestinians in Gaza in his Christmas sermon on Thursday, in an unusually direct appeal during what is normally a solemn, spiritual service on the day Christians across the globe celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Leo, the first US pope, said the story of Jesus being born in a stable showed that God had “pitched his fragile tent” among the people of the world.
“How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?” he asked.
Leo, celebrating his first Christmas after being elected in May by the world’s cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis, has a quieter, more diplomatic style than his predecessor and usually refrains from making political references in his sermons.
In a later Christmas blessing, the pope, who has made care for immigrants a key theme of his early papacy, also lamented the situation for migrants and refugees who “traverse the American continent.”
In a Christmas Eve sermon on Wednesday, the pope said refusing to help the poor and strangers was tantamount to rejecting God himself.
Leo decries “rubble and open wounds of war”
The new pope has lamented the conditions for Palestinians in Gaza several times recently and told journalists last month that the only solution in the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people must include a Palestinian state.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October after two years of intense Israeli bombardment and military operations that followed a deadly attack by Hamas-led fighters on Israeli communities in October 2023. Humanitarian agencies say there is still too little aid getting into Gaza, where nearly the entire population is homeless.
In Thursday’s service with thousands in St. Peter’s Basilica, Leo also lamented conditions for the homeless across the globe and the destruction caused by war more generally.
“Fragile is the flesh of defenseless populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds,” said the pope.
“Fragile are the minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sarah Mullally, who becomes head of the Church of England next month, warned during a Christmas sermon on Thursday that national conversations over immigration were dividing British society.
Currently the Bishop of London, Mullally, 63, will on January 28 become the first woman to lead the centuries-old mother church of the world’s 85-million strong Anglican community.
In her Christmas sermon at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury raised concerns about the hot-button issue of immigration.
“Our national conversations about immigration continue to divide us, when our common humanity should unite us,” she said.
She continued: “We who are Christians then hold fast to joy as an act of resistance.”
This, she said, was “the kind of joy that does not minimize suffering but meets it with courage.”
Immigration has become a central political issue in the United Kingdom.
In response to undocumented asylum seekers making the perilous journey across the Channel to Britain in small boats, Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to “smash the gangs” of people smugglers behind them.
So far he has struggled to reduce the number of migrants arriving in the country — the vast majority of them legally — but the issue is being exploited by the anti-immigration Reform party.
The rise in support for hard-right Reform mirrors advances by far-right parties across Europe.
Mullally is to succeed Justin Welby, who stepped down from the top post earlier this year over findings that the Church of England had covered up a 1970s case of serial sexual abuse against young boys and men.
The Church of England has been struggling to shake accusation of years of sex abuse cover-ups and safeguarding failures.
It is currently looking into a complaint from 2020 against Mullally’s handling of the allegations made by an individual known as ‘N’.
BY: The Times Union – REUTERS – AFP
