Catholic Church England and Wales / Flickr (Left), Unsplash (Right)
Honoring Pope Leo XIV’s commitment to peace and defense of the Christians suffering in Gaza, the Vulnerable People Project (VPP) named one of its aid trucks sent to the war-torn region after the Holy Father.
VPP founder Jason Jones wrote in an exclusive statement to CatholicVote that Pope Leo XIV has remained firmly committed to his first words as Pope, “Peace be with you!”
“Pope Leo XIV not only chose those words as the first of his pontificate, but he then went out of his way to make certain they would not ring hollow,” Jones wrote. “Before he even held his first public Mass as pope, the Holy Father spoke up for what his predecessor had called the ‘martyr Churches,’ applying that phrase first and foremost to the Church of ‘the Holy Land’ – in other words the Christian communities in the West Bank and Gaza.”
The VPP has been sending aid to innocent civilians in Gaza, and it is dedicating a truck to Pope Leo XIV.
Jones then quoted Pope Leo, who said May 14 in an address to pilgrims on the Jubilee for Eastern Churches, “I thank God for those Christians – Eastern and Latin alike – who, above all in the Middle East, persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them. Christians must be given the opportunity, and not just in words, to remain in their native lands with all the rights needed for a secure existence. Please, let us strive for this!”
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Pope Leo has continued to speak on behalf of suffering Christians in Gaza, who, Jones said, are suffering “under Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing.”
Jones explained that, as Pope Leo noted in his first address after his inaugural Mass, Gazans are starving due to the blockades on food and aid. Reuters reported that Israel began allowing some aid trucks to enter Gaza last week.
“After months of Israeli blockades against humanitarian aid to Gaza, about half a million are starving. It is only a matter of time before the international community declares the situation an artificial famine,” Jones told CatholicVote. “The few Israel- and U.S.-backed aid warehouses are so insufficient that desperate Palestinian crowds are beginning to rush them. Several Palestinians died this week after a mob of hungry Gazans rioted over a warehouse of meager rations – and officials fired on them.”
“The reason behind these riots is obvious: hunger, and an insufficient supply of food. And the solution is also obvious: not to pull what little food there is out of reach, but to flood the region with enough food to finally bring real relief,” Jones continued. “Especially for mothers and young children, tens of thousands of whom are on track to starve in the coming weeks and months.”
Jones believes that Pope Leo XIV’s commitment will eventually lead to peace in the Middle East. He noted that while Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to “open the gates of Hell” against Gaza, Pope Leo’s recent election as pontiff is a reminder of Christ’s promise that “the gates of Hell shall not prevail” against the Church, including the Church in Gaza.
“It took our new pope only a few days to establish true peace as a central theme of his pontificate,” Jones concluded. “And you can measure its truth by Pope Leo’s unflinching application of Christ’s peace to the ‘least’ of our brethren – those most under threat and most ignored by the powerful.”
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