Gaza: the priest stays, the catastrophe continues

The parish priest of the only Latin parish in the Gaza Strip, Fr. Gabriel Romanelli, testified at the Meeting of Rimini that the humanitarian catastrophe has not come to an end. It endures, he says, but it has left the gaze of the world. “One cannot even say that it is a post-catastrophe situation, for the catastrophe continues, except that it has vanished from the world’s media.”

He describes a population of 2.3 million souls “that needs absolutely everything”: the bombardments are said to be less intense, but bombs still fall, as far as the city centre. Most of the inhabitants are said to live under tents or in the street, on sandy ground mixed with sewage, without power, struggling each day for a little water. “Gaza is destroyed. The catastrophe is by no means past. Here a daily struggle is waged.”

The Church has never held the life of one’s neighbour to be an abstraction. The fifth commandment does not only forbid killing: it obliges us to succour the life of another, to feed him, to give him drink, not to let him perish when it is in our power to save him. These are the corporal works of mercy that Our Lord, on the day of judgment, will claim as done to Himself: “I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink.” And the shepherd who remains amid the peril when the hireling flees fulfils the word of the Good Shepherd, who giveth his life for his sheep.

It is by this measure that what is done in Gaza is to be judged. The parish is said to provide drinking water to more than 400 families: the church stands above a spring and a cistern and pumps the water by means of a generator, while a litre of diesel is said to cost 10 euros. The priest states that he has remained, together with other priests and religious sisters, so as not to abandon the disabled, the children and the families.

“The shepherd must remain with his flock. We hold back our tears, for that is the duty of those who love. Such is life in this vale of tears.” And he adds: “We are convinced that peace is possible and that a just peace is necessary. It is terrible to see innocent victims on both sides. And all this in the Holy Land, where the incarnate God lived.”

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth commandment and the duty to succour the life of one’s neighbour; the Gospel according to Saint Matthew (XXV), on the works of mercy and the last judgment; the Gospel according to Saint John (X), on the Good Shepherd who giveth his life for his sheep; the antiphon “Salve Regina,” on this vale of tears.