Peter Link 🍉🇨🇺🇵🇸<p>‘He felt our pain’: Catholic church in Gaza grieves Pope Francis’s death</p><p>Pope made nightly phone calls to the Holy Family <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/Catholic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Catholic</span></a> church from the start of the war in October 2023 </p><p>from <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/TheGuardian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TheGuardian</span></a> <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/Guardian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Guardian</span></a><br>Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem and Malak A Tantesh in Gaza<br>Tue 22 Apr 2025 10.32 EDT </p><p>"The first time he spoke to <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/PopeFrancis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PopeFrancis</span></a> during the pontiff’s nightly calls to the Holy Family Catholic church in <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/Gaza" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Gaza</span></a> City, the congregant George Antone, 44, found himself at a loss for words.</p><p>It was October 2023, a few weeks after <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/Hamas" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Hamas</span></a> ignited a devastating war in the Gaza Strip by attacking <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/Israel" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Israel</span></a>. The <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/Palestinian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Palestinian</span></a> territory’s tiny Christian community had taken shelter in the strip’s three churches, but that didn’t mean they were safe. An <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/Israeli" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Israeli</span></a> airstrike had just hit the Greek Orthodox church, killing 18 people; soon, snipers and bombs would also kill civilians at the Holy Family."</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/22/catholic-church-gaza-grieves-pope-francis-death?CMP=share_btn_url" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theguardian.com/world/2025/apr</span><span class="invisible">/22/catholic-church-gaza-grieves-pope-francis-death?CMP=share_btn_url</span></a> </p><p><a href="https://expressional.social/tags/StopGazaGenocide" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>StopGazaGenocide</span></a> <br><a href="https://expressional.social/tags/NotAnotherBomb" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NotAnotherBomb</span></a> <br><a href="https://expressional.social/tags/Palestine" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Palestine</span></a><br><a href="https://expressional.social/tags/news" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>news</span></a> <a href="https://expressional.social/tags/press" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>press</span></a> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://a.gup.pe/u/palestine" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>palestine</span></a></span></p>