Christian children in Gaza ask children in the world to pray for peace

By Lisa Zengarini

Some 7,000 children hailing from 84 countries are expected to converge in Rome on Monday, 6 November, to meet Pope Francis at the Paul VI Hall in the Vatican.

The pilgrimage is part of an event titled  "Learning from Children” organized by the  Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education with the aim to rediscover the purity, hope, and dreams children bring to a world marred by division, discord and conflict.

Pope Francis announced the gathering after the Angelus prayer on October 1. The young pilgrims, aged between 7 and 12, will share with him their hopes and concerns for the future.

Children praying for peace

Their peers of the Holy Family Catholic Parish in Gaza will join them from the besieged Palestinian enclave to pray for peace.  Mother María del Pilar Llerena Vargas, a Peruvian Sister of Charity of the Incarnate Word who serves in the parish, has recorded a short video message  ahead of the event.

In the 40-second video sent on Saturday the Gazan children thank Pope Francis for his ongoing prayers, and ask the children who will gather in Rome on Monday to pray above all for the children living under the conflict in the Holy Land.

Pope Francis' closeness to the Christian community in Gaza

Since the outbreak of the war Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed his closeness and prayers to the 1000-strong Christian community in Gaza, most of whom are Greek Orthodox.  

Over the past four weeks he has regularly phoned the Holy Family parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, who is currently stuck in Bethlehem, in the West Bank, to his vicar, Father Yusuf Asad, and to the nuns who are supporting the IDPs in Gaza.

Holy Family Parish sheltering some 700 displaced people 

The parish compound is presently sheltering some 700 displaced people, mostly Christians. including 200 from the adjacent St. Porphirios Greek Orthodox Church, where 18 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on October 19.

So far, the Holy Family Church hasn’t been hit , though bombs have fallen nearby, as happened again in recent days.

In a previous video addressed last week to Pope Francis, with the Gazan children praying in the church the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Sub Tuum Praesidium prayer, the sound of falling bombs could be heard in the background.

Children bearing the burden of the war, along with women, warn UN agencies

Children, including new-born babies, along with women in Gaza, are disproportionately bearing the burden of the ongoing escalation of hostilities between the Israeli forces and Hamas, both in terms of casualties and of  reduced access to health services, UN agencies warned again on Friday in a joint statement.

As of 3 November, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health 2,326 women and 3,760 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip, representing 67 per cent of all casualties, while thousands more have been injured. This means that 420 children are killed or injured every day, some of them only a few months old.

In their joint statement, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA), and the World Health Organization (WHO) also pointed to an estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, with more than 180 giving birth every day.

These women are unable to access the emergency obstetric services they need to give birth safely and care for their new-borns. With 14 hospitals and 45 primary health care centres closed, some women are having to give birth in shelters, in their homes, in the streets amid rubble, or in overwhelmed healthcare facilities, where sanitation is worsening, and the risk of infection and medical complications is on the rise.

Urgent need for humanitarian pause in Gaza

Despite the lack of sustained and safe access, UN agencies have dispatched life-saving medicines and equipment to Gaza, including supplies for newborns and reproductive health care. However, they say,  much more is needed to meet the immense needs of civilians. They, therefore, called once again for an immediate humanitarian pause “to alleviate the suffering and prevent a desperate situation from becoming catastrophic.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netaniahu again rejected the call for a humanitarian pause after meeting with U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday.