ROME: In his Christmas address on Wednesday, Pope Francis condemned the “extremely grave” humanitarian situation in Gaza and called for “arms to be silenced” globally. He also urged peace in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan.
As Ukraine was hit by 170 Russian missiles and drones in a Christmas morning assault Kyiv called “inhumane,” Pope used his yearly letter to the 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide to urge negotiations for a just peace in the country.
Breathless, the 88-year-old pope also called for the release of Israeli prisoners held by Hamas in Gaza and a truce in the territory.
As thousands of worshippers gathered in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome for the “Urbi et Orbi” (“to the city and the world”) address, he said, “I think of the Christian communities in Israel and Palestine, particularly in Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is extremely grave.”
In Gaza and Israeli-occupied Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, there are no festivities.
“May a ceasefire be established, the hostages be freed, and assistance be provided to those who have been weakened by the conflict and hunger.”
Francis’ appeal for peace was also directed at Sudan, where millions of people face famine after 20 months of bloody civil war.
With one energy worker dead in the 13th significant attack on the system this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blasted Russia for trying to destroy his nation’s damaged power grid.
“Putin attacked on Christmas on purpose,” he claimed. Is there anything more cruel? More than 100 attack drones and more than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles. In defiance of Moscow, Ukraine has celebrated Christmas on December 25 for the past two years instead of January 7, when the majority of Orthodox Christians do.
But according to Russia, five persons were killed overnight by Ukrainian strikes on its territory, including one by a downed drone in the Caucasus nation of North Ossetia.
Bethlehem’s limited joy
Tragically, an Azerbaijan Airlines plane transporting 67 passengers from Baku to the Chechen capital Grozny crashed in western Kazakhstan on the feast day, according to officials. There have been reports of thirty-two survivors, but 35 more are thought to be dead.
In Bethlehem, an Israeli-occupied city in the West Bank and the biblical birthplace of Jesus, Christmas festivities were also subdued.
The Palestinian town has abandoned its enormous Christmas tree and the ornate decorations that often attract crowds of tourists since the start of the war in Gaza.
Anton Salman, the mayor of Bethlehem, stated, “This year we limited our joy.”
Speaking to a small group of people there on Tuesday, the Latin patriarch Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa said he had recently returned from Gaza, where he “saw everything destroyed, poverty, disaster.”
However, I also seen life—they never give up. Therefore, you too shouldn’t quit up. Never. The silence was broken by a procession of scouts in the center of Bethlehem, at Manger Square.
They held signs that read, “Stop the genocide in Gaza now! We want life, not death.”
A little more than two weeks after rebels overthrew President Bashar al-Assad, hundreds of protesters protested the burning of a Christmas tree in a Syrian village in the Christian neighborhoods of Damascus.
A protester who identified himself as George declared, “We don’t belong here anymore if we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country as we used to.”
At a time when over half of Argentina’s population lives in poverty, a Christmas solidarity supper for the homeless in Buenos Aires provided food for almost 3,000 individuals.
Additionally, Christians in Paris attended the first Christmas liturgy at the Notre Dame church since it reopened after a devastating fire in 2019.
