Vatican newspaper highlights plight of Gaza’s children

September 16, 2026

The Vatican newspaper devoted the most prominent front-page article in its September 15 edition to the plight of Gaza’s children.

“Over 20,000 minors [were] killed during the conflict, and more than 40,000 are estimated to remain under the rubble,” according to L’Osservatore Romano. “Consequently, many children left on their own find themselves burying their peers.”

Journalist Davide Dionisi reported:

Children burying children. One encounters such heart-wrenching scenes in the Gaza Strip; this marks the second time in a month that mass funerals have been held where young ones lay flowers and light candles upon the bodies of their peers.

At the beginning of September, 106 bodies, including those of 73 children, were recovered from the rubble of a residential building in southeastern Gaza City, which had been destroyed more than two years ago by an Israeli airstrike. The bodies had remained trapped beneath the building’s debris all this time before rescue teams managed to cut through the reinforced concrete and extract them. The recovery effort is further complicated by the logistical paralysis imposed on the ground.

Dionisi cited reports published in recent weeks by Save the Children and the United Nations.

 

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Further information:

• Gaza: Il prezzo della guerra (L'Osservatore Romano, 9/15/26)
• Roughly 70 Children Among More Than 100 Palestinians Buried in Gaza Mass Funeral (Save the Children, 9/6/26)
• Gaza: Children still at risk despite drop in acute hunger (UN News, 8/24/26)