Yakov Fedorov / Wikimedia Commons
VATICAN CITY // Honoring one of the late Pope Francis’ final requests, the humanitarian aid network Caritas is converting his popemobile into a mobile health clinic for children in Gaza.
Amid the final months of his life, Pope Francis offered his popemobile for this purpose to Caritas Jerusalem, which is working on the vehicle’s transformation with the support of Caritas Sweden, according to a joint May 3 press release from the local chapters of the network. The release stated that the initiative’s goal is to protect and underscore the basic rights and dignity of children — a topic that Pope Francis had emphasized several times at General Audiences early this year, before his hospitalization.
“This vehicle represents the love, care and closeness shown by His Holiness for the most vulnerable, which he expressed throughout the crisis,” stated Caritas Jerusalem Secretary General Anton Asfar.
Almost one million children in Gaza have been displaced, according to the press release. The children caught in the crossfires of the Israel-Hamas conflict face risks of starvation, infection, and illness especially as the humanitarian corridor to Gaza remains blocked, it added. The mobile clinic “will be ready to give primary healthcare to children in Gaza” as soon as the corridor is reopened.
Medical doctors will be aboard the clinic and will be equipped to conduct rapid tests for infections, as well as provide diagnoses, examinations, and treatments. The clinic is also being supplied with vaccines, syringes, needles, suture kits, and a medicine refrigerator.
“With the vehicle, we will be able to reach children who today have no access to health care – children who are injured and malnourished,” Caritas Sweden Secretary General Peter Brune said in the press release. “This is a concrete, lifesaving intervention at a time when the health system in Gaza has almost completely collapsed.”
Brune later added that the popemobile-turned-clinic is “not just a vehicle, it’s a message that the world has not forgotten about the children in Gaza.”
After the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, Pope Francis often called for peace and for a ceasefire. In his final Urbi et Orbi message given on Easter Sunday, he reiterated that call.
“I express my closeness to the sufferings of Christians in Palestine and Israel, and to all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people,” the pontiff said. “The growing climate of anti-Semitism throughout the world is worrisome. Yet at the same time, I think of the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation. I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace!”