As Gaza faces starvation and relentless violence, Catholic leaders are leveraging their moral authority to demand peace and relief for civilians caught in the conflict.
Newsroom (20/08/2025, Gaudium Press ) Catholic leaders are intensifying their pleas for peace in Gaza as the war claims thousands of young lives, with a powerful vigil in Italy underscoring the human toll. Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, led a poignant prayer vigil on Aug. 14, the eve of the Feast of the Assumption, where he and dozens of members from his Bologna diocese read aloud the names and ages of 16 Israeli and 12,211 Palestinian children killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict since its onset in October 2023.
“We pronounce their names one by one,” Zuppi said at the vigil’s start. “They ask us all to commit ourselves to finding or pursuing the path to peace with greater intelligence and passion, starting with a ceasefire and offering the conditions for doing so, from the release of hostages to not taking an entire people hostage.”
The seven-hour reading, held in the ruins of the Church of Casaglia at Monte Sole di Marzabotto, covered a 469-page document listing the names of 16 Israeli children killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, sourced from Israeli government data, and 12,211 Palestinian children killed in Israel’s subsequent Gaza operations, as reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health up to July 25, 2025. The site, where Nazis massacred nearly 800 people, including children, in 1944, was chosen for its symbolic weight. “This is to remember, to pay attention, from this place which is a place of suffering,” Zuppi said.
Organized by the Small Family of the Annunciation, a monastic community preserving Monte Sole’s tragic history, the vigil aligned with the School of Peace at Monte Sole’s mission to promote tolerance. “It is an insistent prayer so that the war may cease, so that the weapons may fall silent, so that humanity may prevail,” Zuppi declared. A seasoned peace mediator, Zuppi, who was considered papabile during the conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV, previously facilitated hostage exchanges in Ukraine as Pope Francis’s envoy.
The vigil is part of a broader Catholic response to Gaza’s escalating crisis. On Aug. 4, the International Union of Superiors General, representing women’s religious congregations, launched a global day of fasting and prayer for “justice and reconciliation.” In Gaza, Rev. Gabriel Romanelli, pastor of the Holy Family Church, described the dire situation in a video message on Aug. 14, noting “bombings everywhere” and widespread fear. His church was bombed on July 13, killing two women sheltering there.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Patriarch of Jerusalem, spoke of the crisis during a Mass on Aug. 15 at the Benedictine Abbey of Abu Gosh. “The blood of the innocent in Gaza and the world is not forgotten,” he said. Pope Leo XIV, addressing journalists on Aug. 13 at Castel Gandolfo, urged an immediate ceasefire: “What purpose does war serve after so long? Dialogue and diplomacy must prevail over violence and weapons.”
As Gaza faces starvation and relentless violence, Catholic leaders are leveraging their moral authority to demand peace and relief for civilians caught in the conflict.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from RNS
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