Pope Stresses Gaza in Christmas Messages

Mamdani inaugural committee is stacked with anti-Israel figures

Pope Leo XIV. Vatican News via YouTube.

Pope Leo XIV highlighted Gaza in his Christmas messages, as Mayor-Elect Mamdani of New York announced an inaugural host committee full of anti-Israel activists.

The Vatican released two Christmas Day messages from the pope. One, a homily at mass during the day, said, “The Word has pitched his fragile tent among us. How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold; and of those of so many other refugees and displaced persons on every continent; or of the makeshift shelters of thousands of homeless people in our own cities? Fragile is the flesh of defenseless populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds. 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.”

Gaza was the only place in the world whose current events Leo mentioned specifically in that speech.

The second message, an “Urbi et Orbi” message, included a longer list of sites. “From God let us ask for justice, peace and stability for Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Syria, trusting in these divine words: ‘The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever’ (Is 32:17).”

That message also mentioned “the tormented people of Ukraine,” “our brothers and sisters in Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” “the beloved people of Haiti” as well as “Myanmar,” and “Thailand and Cambodia.”

It went on, “In becoming man, Jesus took upon himself our fragility, identifying with each one of us: with those who have nothing left and have lost everything, like the inhabitants of Gaza; with those who are prey to hunger and poverty, like the Yemeni people; with those who are fleeing their homeland to seek a future elsewhere, like the many refugees and migrants who cross the Mediterranean or traverse the American continent; with those who have lost their jobs and those who are looking for work, like so many young people who struggle to find employment; with those who are exploited, like many underpaid workers; with those in prison, who often live in inhumane conditions.”

The Pope concluded in part by quoting an Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, identifying him only as “one poet”:

The invocation of peace that rises from every land reaches God’s heart, as one poet wrote:

“Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness…

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.”

A Christmas Day story from the official Vatican News also focused on suffering in Gaza. “Food insecurity is acute…the scale of destruction is staggering,” the article says. Like the pope’s remarks, it is devoid of any context about the Hamas terrorist attack and hostage-taking that prompted Israel’s war of self-defense.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani announced an inaugural committee stacked with extreme anti-Israel figures, including Palestine Children’s Relief Fund ambassador “Ms. Rachel” and Beth Miller of “Jewish Voice for Peace.” Mamdani takes office January 1.

I share the hope for peace expressed by the pope and by Yehuda Amichai. Yet it seems to me that silence or denial about the nature of the Islamist terrorist threat to the West, or the hostility to Israel on display from Mamdani and his allies, only makes the chances of that peace more remote. The pope did not name who he meant by “the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths.” Maybe he was talking about the Iranians or the Hamasniks, but it was vague enough that it was unclear. As for the young people on the front lines, the Israelis and the Ukrainians are defending Western civilization. The Pope can say whatever he wants, but from my point of view, those young Israelis and Ukrainians deserve our thanks, not any statement subject to an interpretation that they’ve somehow been duped by falsehood.

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