“Everyone here is pleading for mercy: to take pity, for mercy, for compassion, for them to stop this war, for them to stop shooting… for them to stop killing people, for them to stop bombing,” the only parish priest in Gaza, Father Gabriel Romanelli, said in a video he posted Sept. 23.
“There are stories that are terrible, there are stories that are truly terrible. People are deeply distressed and implore God to take pity, to have mercy on everyone, and they also implore taking pity on everyone, so that for the love of God this war may end,” the priest continued.
In a video that begins with the reaction of the faithful, including a child who seems frightened by a nearby explosion, the priest lamented that in Gaza “the bombing continues, it’s very heavy and ongoing, it sounds very loud, shrapnel and sounds come, even though some are 200, 300 meters away, 500 meters, 700 meters away, it sounds very loud, not to even imagine what it’s like for the people who are next to them or are in those places. Every day there are deaths and more deaths.”
The priest from the Institute of the Incarnate Word, who first came to Gaza in 2005, said he sometimes no longer knows what to say to those who have lost their loved ones: “I am speechless; we are speechless, people feel worn out. There’s no real progress.”
Romanelli also criticized the fact that, so far, “there has been no real progress” toward peace, nor has there been any “reversal of the bad decisions made,” and that there is no permission to “rebuild people’s homes where they, their ancestors, were born, where they have the right to be.”
After expressing his gratitude for the constant calls for peace from Pope Leo XIV and the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Argentine priest said that in the face of “so much evil, so little compassion, we must cling more to God to try to be better, even in the little things, praying for everyone, for the living and the dead: Jews, Muslims, Russians, those without religion, because all have been created by God” and all “are called to participate in the fullness of the life of the Most Holy Trinity.”
The priest encouraged people to ask “Our Lady, Our Lady of Sorrows, to comfort so many people: there are people under the rubble, there are people who are injured under the rubble, there are people who are not injured but cannot get out, others who are in areas where anyone who goes out on the street is a dead person. According to Civil Defense data, there are many dead … It’s all very sad.”
After mentioning that many remain in the parish because it serves as a shelter and recounting that they had just gone out yesterday to get some fresh air and had to rush back to the church because a bomb had fallen nearby, the priest concluded his message by encouraging people to “do good to everyone, and may God in his mercy take pity on everyone and grant us an end to this war.”
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This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Walter Sanchez Silva is a senior writer for ACI Prensa. He has experience in researching and covering international ecclesiastical events such as World Youth Days (WYD) in Cologne 2005, Madrid 2011, and Rio 2013; the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American Episcopal Council in Aparecida; as well as the trips of Pope Benedict XVI in May 2007 to Brazil and in 2012 to Mexico. He covered Pope Francis' trip to South Korea in 2014 and the Synods of Bishops in the Vatican in 2015 (on the family) and 2019 (on the Amazon). He was also sent to cover the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 and served as a field producer in Buenos Aires in 2013 for the documentary "Pope Francis: The Pope of the New World".
