Palm Sunday: Gaza Christians seek peace, Pope mourns 137 Moscow victims
The faithful walked slowly in a procession past the stone facade of Gaza’s only Catholic church on Palm Sunday, gathering to pray for peace as war raged around them.
Pope Francis sent prayers to the victims of the concert hall attack in Moscow, calling the violence “inhuman acts” that offended God.
Russia observed a national day of mourning on Sunday after the massacre that killed 137 people, the deadliest attack in Europe to have been claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.
President Vladimir Putin has vowed to punish those behind the “barbaric terrorist attack,” saying four gunmen trying to flee to Ukraine had been arrested.
However, Kyiv has strongly denied any connection to the attack, with President Volodymyr Zelensky accusing Putin of trying to shift the blame.
“I assure my prayers for the victims of the cowardly terrorist attack carried out the other evening in Moscow,” said the 87-year-old pope, following a Palm Sunday mass in Saint Peter’s Square.
“May the Lord welcome them in his peace and comfort their families, and convert the hearts of those… who organise and carry out these inhuman actions which offend God, who commanded ‘Thou shalt not kill,” he wrote on X.
AFP reports that Holy Family Church’s tranquil courtyard, filled with dozens of children and older people, belied the humanitarian crisis happening beyond its gates in Gaza City.
Inside the church, worshippers in their dress clothes lined the wooden pews decorated with palm fronds for the service marking the start of Easter week.
“Our celebration of Palm Sunday is an opportunity for hope, goodness and peace for us and for the entire world,” said a young man speaking from the pulpit.
“In order to renew our hearts and make them full of love, giving and peace,” he said, dressed in an ankle-length red robe.
Solemn-looking altar boys in the front row listened quietly, while parishioners with drawn faces after months of war filled the other rows.
The church in northern Gaza is a short drive from Al-Shifa hospital and its neighbourhood, where heavy combat has raged between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters.
A recent United Nations-backed assessment said Gaza’s northern area would fall into famine by May unless there was urgent action.
Heavy combat has made it particularly difficult to get emergency food aid to the some 300,000 the UN estimates still in the area.
“This year, we don’t have the heart to celebrate,” Nabila Saleh, a sister at the Holy Family church told AFP.
“It’s true that we decorated, but we don’t feel the joy of other years.”
The Gaza war was sparked by the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run territory said the total death toll during almost six months of war now stood at 32,226 – most of them women and children.
