(Vatican City) Pope Francis said Sunday he was “close” to the families of Israeli hostages in Gaza, specifying that he had met the mother of one of them, whose body was recovered earlier this month, to whom he sent his “thoughts.”
“I think of the Middle East. So many innocent victims. I think of the mothers who have lost their sons to war. How many young lives have been cut short?” Francis said at the end of the Angelus prayer.
“I think of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was found dead in early September with five other hostages in Gaza. In November of last year, I met his mother, Rachel, whose humanity struck me. My thoughts are with her at this time,” he said.
“I pray for the victims and I continue to be close to all the families of the hostages,” he added.
Hersch Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American national, was 23 when he was abducted from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, in the unprecedented Hamas attack that sparked the ongoing war. His remains were discovered by the Israeli military in a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, along with five other hostages taken in the attack.
“May the conflict in Palestine and Israel cease. May the violence and hatred cease. May the hostages be freed, may negotiations continue and may solutions for peace be found,” the sovereign pontiff insisted.
The UN Human Rights Office says most of the dead are women and children. The fighting has devastated Gaza, repeatedly displacing most of its 2.4 million people and sparking a humanitarian crisis.