Rift between Vatican and Israel grows after Gaza remarks by top papal advisor 

ROME – A growing rift between the Vatican and Israel was exacerbated 14 February, when the Israeli ambassador to the Holy See hit back against a top Vatican official who said the ongoing Israeli military offensive in Gaza is disproportionate.

On the margins of a 13 Feb. event commemorating the 95th anniversary of the Lateran Pacts, which regularised the relationship between the Holy See and the new Republic of Italy in 1929, the Vatican Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, told reporters that it’s time for Israel to change its strategy in Gaza.

“Israel’s right of self-defence, which has been invoked to justify this operation, must be proportional and with 30,000 dead it certainly isn’t,” he said, citing unconfirmed statistics provided by the Gaza Health Ministry.

Parolin said broad calls for Israel to stop the carnage have become “a general voice”, adding “that it can’t go on like this and other paths have to be found to resolve the problem of Gaza, the problem of Palestine”.

He repeated the Vatican’s “sharp and unqualified condemnation” of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel and of all forms of anti-Semitism, while maintaining his criticism of Israeli policy.

In a statement the following day, Israel’s Embassy to the Holy See responded to Parolin’s remarks, calling it “a deplorable declaration”.

“To judge the legitimacy of a war without taking into account ALL of the circumstances and relevant data inevitably leads to mistaken conclusions,” the statement said.

Gaza, the embassy explained, has been transformed by Hamas “into the largest terroristic base ever seen” with “almost no civil infrastructure that has not been used by Hamas for their criminal plans,” including hospitals, schools, and places of worship, among others.

Hamas’s objective of building an unprecedented terrorist operation has been “actively sustained by the local civilian population”, the statement said, adding that civilians themselves actively participated in the 7 October attack on Israel, and were involved in the killing and raping of civilians, and in the taking of hostages.

“All of these acts are defined as war crimes,” the embassy said, insisting that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is conducting its own retaliatory military operation “in the full respect of international law”. 

To this end, the embassy compared statistics from the current war in Gaza to those from previous, Western-led regional conflicts.

Citing information available to them, the embassy said that in Gaza, three civilians have died for every one Hamas militant killed.

“All civilian victims are to be mourned, but in wars and in past operations by NATO forces or by Western forces in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, the proportion was of 9 or 10 civilians for every terrorist. Thus, the percentage of the IDF’s attempt to avoid the death of civilians is around three times higher, regardless of the fact that the battleground in Gaza is much more complicated,” the embassy said.

“Any objective observation cannot not arrive at the conclusion that the responsibility for the death and destruction in Gaza is from Hamas and Hamas alone.”

“This,” the embassy added, “is forgotten too often and too easily,” also stating that it is not correct for the Vatican “to condemn the genocidal massacre of October 7 and then point the finger at Israel referring to their right to existence and self-defence only as a simple duty and not considering the bigger picture”. 

The spat over Parolin’s remarks is the latest twist in a steady splintering of Catholic-Jewish relations since the Gaza war broke out, with a series of perceived missteps by Pope Francis and the Holy See angering the Jewish community.

Most recently, over the weekend, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, 81, and former president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture, inadvertently caused controversy by quoting an Italian rapper critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Ravasi on 11 Feb. had tuned into the finale of Sanremo, the country’s largest annual music festival, and subsequently published a post on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, containing lyrics from an Italian-born rapper of Tunisian origins named Ghali, who fourth place in the competition.

After concluding his performance, Ghali used the spotlight to issue a brief but explosive political statement, saying: “Stop the genocide”, in reference to the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Ghali’s remarks sparked immediate backlash and Ravasi, while not intending to make a political statement with his social media post, also came under fire for having given what appeared a public endorsement of the rapper.

Pope Francis has also come under fire himself for his handling of the Vatican’s reaction to the war in Gaza, most recently from a prominent liberal German theologian, Gregor Maria Hoff, who penned an essay on 9 Feb. in the prestigious journal Communio criticising the Pope’s actions.

Hoff specifically took issue with the Pope’s letter to the Jews of Israel (3 Feb.), saying the pontiff failed to “call a spade a spade” and clearly distinguish between Hamas terrorism and Israeli self-defence.

In his letter, Francis attempted to extend an olive branch to the Jewish community, condemning attitudes of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism that have arisen since the Gaza war broke out last year.

“The path that the Church has walked with you, the ancient people of the covenant, rejects every form of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, unequivocally condemning manifestations of hatred towards Jews and Judaism as a sin against God,” Francis said.

The letter followed objections from many Jewish leaders to what they argue is the Pope’s perplexing moral equivalence regarding the war in Gaza, lamenting violence on all sides but failing to identify Hamas as the aggressor and Israel as engaged in legitimate self-defence.

Many Jewish leaders were also offended in November 2023 after a Palestinian delegation visited the Vatican and reported that Pope Francis had used the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s offensive, a claim a Vatican spokesman attempted to deny but without great success.

Hoff in his essay questioned the sincerity of Francis’s commitment to a “special relationship” with Judaism, saying that if it doesn’t mean “trustworthy loyalty in an emergency” then it is just empty rhetoric, and that what Jews really want to hear from the Pope is simple: “Whoever attacks Jews, also attacks us!”

Set against all that, Parolin’s remarks and Israel’s immediate response have only added to what is becoming a festering crisis in relations that is increasingly difficult for the Pope and his aides to ignore.

Reports on 15 Feb. suggest Israel is trying to “tone down” the criticism made by the embassy of Parolin’s Gaza remarks, explaining that the word “regrettable” should have been used instead of “deplorable”.

Photo: Pope Francis speaks with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin during a visit to Peru, 21 January 2018. (Photo by VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty Images.)

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