The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, on Monday condemned the “carnage” in Gaza and said it was “unacceptable” to dismiss the death toll there as collateral damage.
Parolin was speaking to Vatican media ahead of the two-year anniversary of what he called the “inhuman and indefensible” October 7 Hamas attack inside Israel, and said he prayed for the hostages still being held.
Parolin said the Hamas-Israel war “has brought about disastrous and inhuman consequences”, adding that he was struck by the daily death toll among the Palestinian population, including “so many children whose only fault seems to be having been born there”.
“We risk becoming desensitised to this carnage,” Parolin said in the interview, published in Italian and English.
He added: “It is unacceptable and unjustifiable to reduce human beings to mere ‘collateral damage’.”
He also condemned those who used the war as justification for antisemitism, which he called a “cancer”, warning that “the perverse chain of hatred can only generate a spiral that leads nowhere good”.
Parolin said it was “clear that the international community is, unfortunately, powerless and that the countries truly capable of exerting influence have so far failed to act to stop the ongoing massacre”.
He added: “It’s not enough to say that what is happening is unacceptable and then continue to allow it to happen.”
Asked about US President Donald Trump’s plan for peace, he said: “Any plan that includes the Palestinian people in decisions about their own future, and helps put an end to this slaughter — releasing hostages and halting the daily killing of hundreds of people — is to be welcomed and supported.”
He also welcomed street demonstrations for Gaza across the world, saying: “It shows we are not condemned to indifference.”
Pope Leo XIV has in recent months condemned the “barbarity” of the war and condemned the fact the Palestinians were being “forcibly displaced again from their lands”.
The Holy See officially recognised the a Palestinian state 10 years ago.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 67,160 Palestinians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.
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