In front of the Holy Sepulcher, in the heart of the Christian neighborhood in Jerusalem, Ghassan Makelafeh, 60, spoken gently about the death of Pope Francis, a “loss to the Church” but also a loss for the Palestinians. “His empathy was delivered to all, to all who suffer. For the hostages in Gaza, for the children who died in Gaza under the bombs. Without choosing sides,” he insisted this 60 -year -old Christian. “We desperately need voices that ask for fire and peace,” added the man who works in the tourism sector.
The Palestinians know that their followers are few. Pope Francis used extremely strong words to condemn the war. In a message for Easter celebrations, read by one of its collaborators, on Sunday again denounced the “dramatic and shameful humanitarian situation” in Gaza while warning against the “growing climate of anti -Semitism.”
In December 2024, after a bombing of the Israeli army in Gaza who killed seven children of the same family, he expressed their emotion and anger: “Yesterday, the children were bombarded. This is cruelty, not war. I am a heart.” Symbolically, the Pope had prayed in front of a Nativity scene where Christ lay on a Keffiyeh in black and white, the symbol of the Palestinian resistance. The president of the Palestinian authority, Mahmoud Abbas, paid tribute to the Pope: “Today we have lost a faithful friend of the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights.”
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