Jesuit superior in Holy Land: Our leaders ‘seem to have no conscience’
June 13, 2025
Father David Neuhaus, SJ, superior of the Jesuits in the Holy Land, lamented the suffering there in a front-page article in the June 12 edition of the Vatican newspaper.
Referring to a city in Gaza, Father Neuhaus, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, began:
The Israeli army has heavily bombed Khan Yunis in recent days. Alaa al Najjar, a pediatrician, who was at work, lost nine of her ten children. Her husband was injured and died a few days later. On the night of Wednesday, June 11, Alaa and her only surviving son, Adam, arrived in Italy to receive medical care. I share these words under their gaze.
“There is no light at the end of the tunnel in Palestine and Israel at this time,” he continued. “Our governments are mostly made up of leaders who seem to have no conscience. And we continue to sink into the darkness of an age where there is no hope, no mercy, no compassion.” He added:
When I try to push away this sense of despair, I feel as if I am betraying those who mourn their dead, the wounded, the hostages and prisoners, the displaced and homeless, the hungry, those who die slowly because there is no medicine, those who are locked in a reality where the horizon of hope has been closed, replaced by a wall that proclaims there is no way out.
Father Neuhaus recalled how his parents fled Nazi Germany for South Africa, “where a racist regime had established a system of apartheid that privileged whites over blacks ... And yet, Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa are memories of the past. This is a consolation in times of present darkness and gives rise to an occasional glimmer of hope in Israel and Palestine today.”
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