Pope, Palestine president discuss ‘alarming’ situation in Middle East

ROME – Pope Leo XIV and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas spoke over the phone Monday to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, with the pope reiterating the need for peaceful dialogue amid escalating conflict.

A March 16 communique from the Vatican said the pope received a phone call from Abbas that day “concerning the alarming developments in the conflict in the Middle East and the living conditions of the Palestinian people.”

“During the conversation, the Holy Father reaffirmed the Holy See’s commitment to achieving peace through political and diplomatic dialogue, as well as through full respect for international law,” the statement said.

The phone call comes after some 16 people died over the weekend in Israeli strikes on the West Bank, according to health officials.

Several police officers were killed and over a dozen bystanders injured in a strike near the entrance to the town of Zawayda in the center of the Gaza Strip Sunday, while a missile strike in the refugee camp of Nuseirat in central Gaza struck a house and killed four people, including a young couple and their 10-year-old son. The nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital confirmed that the woman had been pregnant with twins.

His appeal also comes amid rising international dispute over the U.S. and Israeli-led war in Iran, which flared up in recent weeks and has expanded to Lebanon, where Israel is conducting strikes against Hezbollah forces.

Leo XIV on Sunday had made an appeal for an end to the conflict, lamenting that “For two weeks now, the peoples of the Middle East have been suffering the horrific violence of war.”

“Thousands of innocent people have been killed, and countless others have been forced to flee their homes,” he said, asking that dialogue be resumed, as “violence can never lead to the justice, stability and peace for which the peoples are waiting.”

He also voiced “prayerful closeness to all who have lost loved ones in the attacks, which have struck schools, hospitals and residential areas.”

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The remark alluded to a strike on an Iranian girls’ school that left at least 175 people, mostly children, dead in what is believed to have been a U.S. missile attack.

Pope Leo Sunday also issued a special appeal for Lebanon, where he traveled last year after visiting Turkey, saying the current situation in Lebanon is “a cause for great concern.”

Israeli military forces have said their troops launched “limited and targeted ground operations” in southern Lebanon amid intensified fighting with Hezbollah.

This latest spat between Israel and Hezbollah came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, bringing an end to a ceasefire brokered between the two in 2024.

Leo in his appeal for Lebanon voiced hope that “avenues for dialogue will emerge to support the country’s authorities in implementing lasting solutions to the serious crisis currently unfolding, for the common good of all the Lebanese people.”

Previously, during a March 13 audience with participants in the 36th Course on the Internal Forum of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the pope had urged those responsible for waging war to go to confession.

“One might ask: do those Christians who bear grave responsibility in armed conflicts have the humility and courage to undertake a serious examination of conscience and confess?” he said.

The remark was widely taken as an indirect rebuke of Catholic politicians such as U.S. Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who have been the architects of the current war in Iran and the recent forced removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Prior to Monday’s phone call, Abbas and Pope Leo held their first meeting in November, when Abbas visited the Vatican on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the global agreement between the Holy See and the State of Palestine.

During that meeting, the two discussed the need to provide assistance to civilians in Gaza and the pursuit of a two-state solution as a means of ending conflict in the region.

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