Catholic World News

Vatican newspaper deplores killing of children in Gaza

July 14, 2025

In the most prominent front-page article in its July 11 edition, L’Osservatore Romano deplored the killing of children in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, by an Israeli airstrike, as the children waited in line at a clinic for nutritional supplies.

In “Gaza: La strage dei bambini” [Gaza: The Massacre of Children], staff journalist Roberto Paglialonga wrote:

The question we cannot help asking is: why? Why so many lives taken when they are not even on the verge of blossoming into adulthood? Yesterday in Gaza, yet another massacre of children took place. Attacked when defenseless, perhaps at their most vulnerable: nine were killed while queuing to receive food and aid in Deir el-Balah. We’re talking about therapeutic, nutritional food, therefore “lifesaving” and doubly essential. But approximately 20,000 children have died since the beginning of the war.

There is no plausible answer to this rhetorical question. Clearly, all that remains is anger and outrage ...

It is the scandal of “the unjust use of hunger as a weapon of war,” against which Pope Leo XIV expressed his—and our—dismay in a message to the FAO a few days ago. Killing children means erasing the future, and thus the hope for true peace for Gaza and Palestine. With the risk that the few who survive will grow up to be imbibed by the fanaticism and hatred they seek to eradicate ...

How much longer will we have to wait for the “abyss of abjection” to end?

 


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