For two years the attention of the world has been concentrated on what happened and happens in the Middle East, in the Holy Land and in particular in the Gaza Strip Where the population is “attacked by the offensive of the Israeli army and pressed by Hamas” (both peace in the Holy Land, SPS, 24.9.2025).
We start from the tragic reality of Gaza to make “in a single embrace, the Holy Land, Ukraine and all the other areas bloody by the war” (appeal for the peace of the churches in Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, 23.9.2025), especially the most forgotten ones.
For two years we have followed the developments of the situation with a sense of impotence with a sense of impotence. To pay the consequences of a policy no longer worthy of the name, because it replaces violence against law, were and above all innocent people, among these many, too many children.
We see, not only in the Holy Land, the weakness of international and multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. The urgency of “most effective world organizations, endowed with authorities to ensure the worldwide good good, emerges, the uprooting of hunger and misery and the certain defense of fundamental human rights” (brothers all 172).
For our part, with the National and International Caritas network, We see signs of hope in the initiatives that ask for and build peace, who question governments regarding respect for human rights and international humanitarian law. We have promoted and promoted solidarity initiatives with the populations affected, in particular in support of the projects carried out with Caritas Jerusalem. We encourage all the efforts of those looking for dialogue, who build bridges, who communicate people, populations, cultural and religious traditions.
We join the Italian bishops in asking for “with force that Gaza ceases all forms of violence unacceptable against an entire people and that the hostages are freed”, that “the international humanitarian law is respected, ending the forced exile of the Palestinian population”, who works in the “perspective of ‘two peoples, two states”, soliciting “the Italian government and the European institutions to do all the possible way” peace in the Holy Land).
In tune with Pope Leo XIV, the CEI and Caritas Internationalis, hoping for an active role of the European Union as “peace teacher” (CEI press release, 24.9.2025) and the United Nations as a place of prevention and peaceful solution of conflicts, Italian Caritas also reaffirms the need for a ceased the immediate and permanent fire, of the unlimited humanitarian access to put an end to hunger and provide assistance, the deployment of a United Nations peace force to protect civilians, the protection of all civilians, in particular children, women and the elderly, of the recognition of responsibilities before national and international courts.
Italian Caritas – accepting the invitation of Pope Leo XIV to pray every day of this month the Rosary for Peace – undertakes to reaffirm “nonviolence, dialogue, listening and the meeting as a method and style of fraternity, involving everyone, starting from the managers of the peoples and nations, Because they promote solutions capable of guaranteeing security and dignity for everyone “(appeal for the peace of the churches in Italy, Slovenia and Croatia), to prevent all forms of anti -Semitism and Islamophobia in our country, to reject national selfishness that irreparablely remove the perspective of the common good and the” common house “, to support anyone in the processes of reconciliation, Parish and community a house of peace and nonviolence.
(Photo Ansa above: the smoke released by an Israeli raid on Gaza City on October 7, on the second anniversary of the Hamas attack against Israel)