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Sunday 19 November 2023

Al-Aqsa Professor: Pope Francis has ‘clear voice’ on Gaza, more must be done

 


  
From the Website of Vatican
 

Al-Aqsa Professor: Pope Francis has ‘clear voice’ on Gaza, more must be done


In an interview with Vatican News, Jerusalem-based Professor Mustafa AbuSway describes the “unbridled carnage” in Gaza, and thanks Pope Francis for his efforts for a ceasefire, saying “we need to hear his voice more and more.”

Pope Francis’ calls for a ceasefire in Gaza are a “clear voice” that “we need to hear more and more.”

That’s according to Mustafa AbuSway, the Imam Al-Ghazali Chair at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites.

In an interview with Vatican News, the Palestinian professor – who also teaches at Al-Quds University – discussed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the role of the Catholic Church in peacebuilding, and how his own Islamic faith helps him to navigate these difficult times.
“Unbridled carnage” in Gaza

As he is based in Jerusalem, Professor AbuSway said he himself is “fine, relatively speaking”.

He did describe, however, the “psychological stress, the sadness, the frustration” of following the situation in Gaza and the northern West Bank from afar.

“This is really something new,” he said, “this unbridled carnage being streamed live to all the globe. This is what distinguishes this event from previous wars: we have images of all the suffering.”

One child dies every ten minutes in Gaza, he said.

Despite this, however, “it was not the death of a child, but the survival of one, that made me really very, very sad”. A video had emerged before our interview, Professor AbuSway said, of a child buried alive under rubble attempting to free herself with one hand.

The fact that such Palestinian suffering is largely being ignored by Western governments, he added, brings to his mind Jesus’ saying that “with their ears they barely hear, and they have closed their eyes.” 



Professor Mustafa AbuSway
The role of the Church

Professor AbuSway noted that while many Western governments have refused to call for a ceasefire, “there is a clear voice from Pope Francis, thankfully.”

“The Pope,” he said, “has a moral voice that we need to hear more and more.”

Professor AbuSway, a graduate of the Catholic institutions Bethlehem University and Boston College, added that “the Catholic Church is part and parcel of the Palestinian mosaic, the social fabric.”

“We have been in this together for all these decades of human suffering. And we speak with one moral voice.”

Professor AbuSway also mentioned with approval the Kairos Document, a text written by various Palestinian Christian leaders on the subject of the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

BIBLE LIGHTS PROMOTIONS

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