Cardinal Pizzaballa: Christians Want Peace, ‘new Leaders’ In Middle East

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem called for new leadership in the Middle East ahead of Israel’s upcoming October 27 elections.

Speaking to journalists during his visit to Assisi on Thursday, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa said that Christians in the Holy Land are tired and want peace.

“Everyone is looking to the elections as though they will solve all the problems. In reality, however, the problems of the Middle East are the kind that will require a great deal of time,” he said.

“We need new faces, new leaders,” he declared. “The voters will decide that.”

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“Like everyone else, Christians are deeply weary of this endless back-and-forth-of announcements that are then contradicted by events,” Pizzaballa said. “It has become part of daily life.”

“Unfortunately, this has created an ever-growing sense of distrust among the population, to the point that people no longer believe anything, even when it turns out to be true. And when something genuinely positive does happen, people struggle to believe it because they are no longer accustomed to seeing good news. It is, in short, a very heavy situation,” he explained.

Despite that heaviness hanging over Christians in the region, he insisted that signs of hope persist.

“Hope remains, because there are so many people who continue to put themselves on the line in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel,” Pizzaballa said.

“I constantly meet young people but also older men and women — professors and others who have something to lose in terms of their relationships — yet they still choose to get involved, to build encounters, to defend others,” he said. “There are still antibodies within that society that prevent the whole body from being overcome by this virus of violence.”

The Cardinal spoke about Holy Family Parish in Gaza, which was struck by an Israeli rocket last year as a sign of hope.

“There are 541 people. We know every single one by name. They are trying, in whatever way they can, to return to normal life,” he said. “We are working to reopen the school. We have opened a medical centre.”

“There are priests, but above all very active religious sisters who run activities for children — not only Christian children,” he noted. “In the midst of such a devastated reality, we are trying above all to re-create an environment that is as healthy and peaceful as possible.”

Despite signs of hope in the region, Pizzaballa said worry persists.

“What worries me most at the moment is that we may remain trapped in this condition of neither war nor peace, in this ambiguous situation where people keep talking about solutions without actually creating real ones,” he said.

“That concerns me because it fosters an increasingly cynical attitude of distrust in people’s hearts, and that is the greatest danger I see within the population today.”

The Patriarch’s comments came after scores of attacks against Christians in Israel this spring.

A Jewish-Israeli watchdog documented 83 anti-Christian acts of harassment in just three months, warning attacks by extremists are increasing, especially in Jerusalem.