Vatican newspaper highlights ‘note of hope’ in Gaza refugee camp

July 08, 2026

L’Osservatore Romano devoted the most prominent front-page article in its July 7 edition to Suhail Abu Shawish, a Palestinian craftsman who repairs ouds in a Gaza refugee camp.

In “Note di speranza” (Note of hope), Roberto Paglialonga, a staff journalist at the Vatican newspaper, recounted Shawish’s story, told in a June Arab News/AFP article. Paglialonga commented:

“Where words fail... music speaks.” In Gaza, words were lost long ago, swallowed up by the grief, suffering, and exhaustion of a population torn apart by over 1,000 days of conflict, ever since that brutal October 7, 2023, and Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel. And, all too often, they are no longer even sustained by the strength to cry out for hope or plead for happiness; they are stifled in the throat by the weeping of a life reduced to rubble. One wonders, then, if Suhail Abu Shawish ever thought of this phrase by Ludwig van Beethoven when, armed with creativity and dedication, he set to work in his artisan’s workshop.

 

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Further information:

• Note di speranza (L'Osservatore Romano, 7/7/26)
• From rubble to music: Gaza’s Oud repairman (Arab News, 6/28/26)