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Pope Francis Dies at 88 After Final Appeal for Gaza Cease-Fire
"Will the millions who will mourn his death these coming days respect this wish of his? Will they care for Gazans and Palestinians the way he did?"
Apr 21, 2025
The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Francis has died at the age of 88, hours after he appeared at an Easter mass and appealed for an end to Israel's war on the Gaza Strip.
The pope's Easter address, read aloud by Archbishop Diego Ravelli, decried the "terrible conflict" in Gaza that "continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation."
"I appeal to the warring parties: call a cease-fire, release the hostages, and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace!" said the message from the pope, an outspoken opponent of military conflict and war profiteers, climate destruction, and runaway economic inequality.
"In the face of the cruelty of conflicts that involve defenceless civilians and attack schools, hospitals, and humanitarian workers, we cannot allow ourselves to forget that it is not targets that are struck, but persons, each possessed of a soul and human dignity," the pope's address continued.
News of Pope Francis' death came after a bout with double pneumonia left him hospitalized for more than a month. The Vatican did not specify a cause of death in its announcement.
The Nation's John Nichols wrote Sunday that Pope Francis' calls for peace have made him "arguably the most consistent high-profile defender of the humanity of the Palestinian people during a period when the Israeli assault on Gaza has been pursued with relentless violence."
Nichols continued:
With a boldness and specificity that has often sparked controversy, this pope has challenged economic injustice, racism, environmental neglect, militarism, and the abuses of new technologies that increase inequality. He has faced his share of criticism, not just from conservatives who disapprove of his views but also from reformers who sincerely wish that he would do more to modernize the church. Yet, in a time of too much indifference and impunity, this pope has remained uniquely engaged with the embattled regions that political and media elites neglect or abandon.
That's been especially true when it comes to Gaza, where Pope Francis has long argued for cease-fires, arms blockades, aid convoys, and a diplomatic urgency that recognizes that Palestinians and Israelis are "fraternal peoples [who] have the right to live in peace."
In a tribute to Pope Francis, Palestinian theologian Munther Isaac wrote Monday that "he conveyed true compassion to Palestinians, most notably to those in Gaza during this genocide."
"The pope left our world today, and the occupation and the wall remained. Even worse, he left our world while a genocide continues to unfold," Isaac wrote, pointing to the pontiff's call for a thorough international investigation of Israel's assault on Gaza.
"Today I wonder: Will the millions who will mourn his death these coming days respect this wish of his?" Isaac asked. "Will they care for Gazans and Palestinians the way he did?"
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Pope Calls Trump's Mass Deportation Plan 'Major Crisis'
The pontiff also rejected Vice President JD Vance's attempt to use a Catholic tenet to serve the administration's anti-migrant agenda.
Feb 11, 2025
Pope Francis on Tuesday reaffirmed his condemnation of U.S. President Donald Trump's anti-migrant agenda and explicitly rebuked what critics have called Vice President JD Vance's misinterpretation of Catholic theology in an attempt to justify the Republican administration's mass deportation plan.
In a letter to U.S. bishops, the pontiff wrote: "I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations. The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.
What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.
The Pope acknowledged "the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival," but also asserted that "the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness."
The Pope continued:
This is not a minor issue: An authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized. The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all—as I have affirmed on numerous occasions—welcomes, protects, promotes, and integrates the most fragile, unprotected, and vulnerable. This does not impede the development of a policy that regulates orderly and legal migration. However, this development cannot come about through the privilege of some and the sacrifice of others. What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.
While not explicitly naming him, the Pope's letter refutes remarks by Vance, who last month invoked the medieval Catholic concept of ordo amoris—which posits a ranking of affection with the deity figures God and Jesus at the highest level, followed by self, family, friends, and others—to show that Christians should love citizens more than migrants.
"Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups," the missive states. "In other words: The human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation."
"The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the Good Samaritan... that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception," the pontiff said.
Imagine you're just some 30-something guy who converts to one of the world's major religions and in less than a decade its spiritual leader is rebuking you in front of the entire world That's how big a loser JD Vance is apnews.com/article/pope...
[image or embed]
— Will Bunch ( @willbunch.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 8:21 AM
"I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of goodwill, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters," the Pope added. "With charity and clarity we are all called to live in solidarity and fraternity, to build bridges that bring us ever closer together, to avoid walls of ignominy, and to learn to give our lives as Jesus Christ gave his for the salvation of all."
Pope Francis is a longtime champion of migrant rights. The 88-year-old Argentinian criticized Trump's so-called "zero-tolerance" immigration policies, including family separation and construction of a wall along portions of the Mexican border, during the Republican's first term in office.
"Builders of walls, be they made of razor wire or bricks, will end up becoming prisoners of the walls they build," the Pope said in 2019.
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Biden's Faith and Support for Genocide in Gaza
As a self-proclaimed observant, practicing Catholic, you have not only failed to heed Pope Francis' figurative encyclical regarding Gaza but are shipping billions of dollars of weapons into the arsenal of the Israeli government.
Dec 31, 2023
We and many other organizations and peaceful protesters in our country have worked in vain to persuade President Joe Biden to use his influence to have the Israeli regime agree to a ceasefire that would allow hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks daily into the devastated graveyard that is now the Gaza Strip. Biden regularly begs Israel to let in more trucks, paid for by the U.S. At the same time the Biden administration exercises veto power on the U.N. Security Council blocking a cease-fire, truce, or negotiations toward a permanent two-state resolution. A cease-fire would at least allow aid to reach the besieged.
According to Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, “[U]nless something changes, the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population—close to half a million human beings” can die within a year. (See, The Guardian, December 29, 2023).
We have appealed to Biden’s duty to apply vigorous diplomacy to this cascade of genocidal war crimes by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This means suspension of hostilities, and the immediate flow of critical food, water, medical, shelter, and other supplies for civilians, followed by serious negotiations toward a two-state solution. Instead, Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, behaves as a secretary of war shuttling between the U.S. and Israel.
We have appealed to Biden’s political sense and how he is losing the support of more Americans every day as the slaughters of children, women, the elderly and other innocents worsen.
None of these appeals has moved this co-belligerent in the White House. All that is left is to appeal to what he has said his practicing Catholicism means to him every day. The following letter addresses his conscience as a matter of his professed religious faith.
December 29, 2023
Honorable Joe Biden
President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Re: Your Catholic faith. Aiding and abetting Israeli government genocide in Gaza including bombing the Holy Family Catholic Church and Convent. Abuse of power is a cardinal sin.
Dear Mr. President:
You describe yourself as a “practicing Catholic.” During an interview with The Jesuit Review on September 21, 2015, you emphatically asserted that all faiths have an “obligation to fight against abuse of power” as a cardinal sin worse than all others that should be arrested and defeated. You added that “every human being is entitled to be treated with dignity.”
In late October, Pope Francis decried the Israeli government’s post-October 7, 2023, attack on Gaza in a phone conversation with Israeli President Isaac Herzog: “It is forbidden to respond to terror with terror.” On December 17, 2023, the pope deplored as “terrorism” the bombing and killings by the Israeli government of two Catholic women, an elderly mother, and her grown daughter, and the wounding of seven others who had taken refuge in the Holy Family Catholic Church and Convent.
The Israeli government’s defense minister has dehumanized 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals” and pledged to treat them, accordingly, denying them the dignity to which you insist each person is entitled according to your Catholic gospel.
You have acted unswervingly in support of the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza, including a siege that according to the Israeli defense minister’s proclamation means “no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water.” Article II (c) of the Genocide Convention in 1949, born of the Holocaust, defines genocide as, “Deliberately inflicting on [a national, ethnical, racial, or religious] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
To complement the physical destruction caused by the siege, the Israeli government has bombed and invaded Gaza, killing tens of thousands of civilians, and displaced virtually its entire population targeting hospitals, ambulances, journalists, water mains, houses, apartment buildings, schools, offices, marketplaces, United Nations marked schools, UNRWA personnel, places of worship, and crowded refugee camps, roads, generators and electric networks, and more.
This is genocide by any yardstick. Pope Francis has denounced the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza as “terrorism.” As a self-proclaimed observant, practicing Catholic, you have not only failed to heed Pope Francis’ figurative encyclical regarding Gaza but are shipping billions of dollars of weapons into the arsenal of the Israeli government to assist its Gaza terrorism, including attacking the Holy Family Catholic Church. In your many expressions of support for what Netanyahu is destroying in Gaza, you have not found any room to express condemnation of this Israeli government’s attack on this lone Catholic Church in Gaza.
You have made the U.S. government into a “co-belligerent” under international law and have given a greenlight “with powerful weaponry” to what Netanyahu is doing to Gaza, including enabling him to block most humanitarian aid from starving, sick, and mortally injured Palestinians, a majority of whom are women and children.
The Israeli government has no self-defense justification for the genocide. It targets Palestinian civilians throughout Gaza wherever they are gathered, fleeing, sheltering, starving, and dying.
Practicing Catholics are made of more holy and peaceful convictions.
King Henry VIII was excommunicated by Pope Paul III in 1538 for divorcing Catherine of Aragon, a far lesser sin by your standards than the United States’ and Israeli government’s continuing “abuse of power” in Gaza, i.e., terrorism, war crimes, and genocide, promoted by American weapons, intelligence, and repeated lone vetoes in the United Nations Security Council—a cardinal sins according to your own yardstick.
What do you think Pope Francis should communicate to you?
Sincerely,
Bruce Fein, Esq.
Ralph Nader, Esq.
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