Two more generations before Jews and Arabs can live in peace, says Vatican’s top man in Jerusalem

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa never uses the word genocide to describe Israel’s destruction of Gaza during its two-year war with Hamas, which, according to Palestinian health authorities, has killed more than 67,000 Gazans through aerial attacks, land assaults and famine.

I ask the Vatican’s Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem why he avoids the term even though many Catholic priests have used it, as have the International Association of Genocide Scholars and two Israeli human-rights groups. The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, this week called Gaza a “massacre” zone.

“The Church should build, not destroy, with words,” Cardinal Pizzaballa told me Oct. 1, eight days before Hamas and Israel signed a deal to release the 48 remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza and begin the staged withdrawal of Israeli forces. “We have to use terminology that should be attached to the truth, without shaming, without creating new barriers. Words can build but also can destroy.”

His careful use of language during Israel’s longest and most devastating war with the Palestinians illustrates the tight-rope balancing act he had to master in his 35-year career among Jews and Arabs, including Catholic Israelis and Catholic Palestinians, in the Holy Land.

Cardinal Pizzaballa called the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, “barbaric.” Later that month, he offered to exchange himself for the dozen Israeli children among the 250 hostages taken by Hamas. “If this can lead to freedom, to bring the children home, no problem,” he said during a video call with Italian journalists. “There is a total willingness on my part.”

Analysis: Trump’s Gaza deal is brimming with hope but short on details and long-term solutions

At the same time, Holy See diplomatic philosophy requires its lieutenants not to remain indifferent to human suffering. The prelate from northern Italy who was elevated to cardinal by the late Pope Francis one week before Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was spotted two months later wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Arab head scarf that has come to represent the Palestinian resistance, on a visit to Bethlehem in the West Bank. The blue, grey and white keffiyeh was draped over his red liturgical robe.

Since the start of the war, he has made three visits to the last Catholic church in Gaza, the Holy Family Church, in support of its pastor, Father Gabriel Romanelli, and his embattled staff. Each visit came at great personal risk to himself and his entourage since the church compound has been attacked several times by Israeli forces. His last visit was in July. “The church was shaking from the explosions nearby,” he says. “I was not afraid. There were little children in the compound, they are used to these sounds, the shaking.”

Open this photo in gallery:

In an apparent gesture of defiance, the cardinal told Catholics in Gaza City, where the Holy Family Church is located, not to comply with Israeli evacuation orders. According to the U.S. religious journal First Things, he urged Catholics not to flee for fear that doing so would be viewed as “complicity in an Israeli campaign to depopulate Gaza.”

His offer to trade himself for hostages and his visits to Gaza when it was being turned to rubble propelled him to the top ranks of the Vatican’s best-known men in red. Earlier this year, he was considered a contender to replace Pope Francis, who died at age 88 in April. Today, the Italian media is full of speculation that he is being sized up by Francis’s successor, the American Pope Leo XIV, as the Vatican’s next secretary of state, replacing the 70-year-old Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Cardinal Pizzaballa has never publicly stated any desire to leave the Holy Land for a top position in Rome – cardinals are urged to avoid overt ambition in favour or spiritual leadership. But there is little doubt he is one of the Vatican’s fastest-rising stars and could have another career ahead of him within the Vatican; at age 60, he is considered positively boyish by the Vatican standards.

Open this photo in gallery:

“He is a good administrator and appreciated like a piece of gold because of his honesty,” says Father David Neuhaus, the former Latin Patriarchal Vicar for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel who worked with Cardinal Pizzaballa for several years. “And as a diplomat, he is listened to in Rome and New York and other power centres.”

The Latin Patriarchate is a Catholic Church diocese whose territory covers Palestine, Israel, Jordan and Cyprus. Formed in 1099 in the First Crusade, its modern incarnation, from the mid-1800s, lies just beyond the 16th Century Jaffa Gate, one of the seven entrances to Old Jerusalem.

On the warm Oct. 1 day in Jerusalem, the war in Gaza, less than a two-hour drive away, could not seem more distant. The pale limestone of the patriarchate itself, and its small cathedral, which was consecrated in 1872, sparkle in the midday sun. “I never hear anything about Gaza here, it all seems so normal,” says Ignacio González, a Mexican Catholic artisan who is restoring some of the church’s faded paintings and statues.

Cardinal Pizzaballa arrives precisely on time to talk to me on the second floor of the patriarchate, home to one cardinal, three bishops, three sisters and seven priests. The member of the Franciscan order wears a simple black cassock and a red zucchetto (skull cap). A hefty golden crucifix dangles from his neck.

He is tall, slim and looks athletic (Pizzaballa literally means “dancing pizza”). Born and raised in the small town of Cologno al Serio northeast of Milan, near Bergamo, he played soccer as a kid. His inspiration was his uncle Pierluigi Pizzaballa, who was one the Italian game’s best-known players in the 1960s and 1970s. The cardinal still supports team Atalanta, where his uncle spent much of his career.

Open this photo in gallery:

He speaks English fluently, though with a heavy, charming Italian accent. He is also equally proficient in Hebrew, though his Arabic is “poor” in spite of having spent more than half his life immersed in the confluence of Arabic and Jewish cultures. At first, he seems a bit tense – he rarely gives long interviews – then relaxes into the conversation. At one point, he looks at my handwritten notes in astonishment. “They look like hieroglyphics,” he says. I assure him not to worry, since I am recording the interview.

We meet two days after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his 20-point peace plan for Gaza, which calls for the immediate release of the 48 Israeli hostages, dead and alive, in Gaza; the release of almost 2,000 Palestinians in Israeli detention; the disarmament of Hamas; the staged withdrawal of Israeli forces from the strip; the disarmament of Hamas; and a pledge not to force any Palestinians out of the strip as it is rebuilt. A week later, the early stages of this plan were falling into place after intense negotiations among Hamas, Israel and the U.S. in Egypt.

The cardinal confessed that he didn’t love the plan overall but that “doing nothing would be worse. I hope this will be the beginning of something new. Gazans are tired but also Israelis.”

His main concern? “What is problematic with the plan is that it was prepared for Palestinians, not with Palestinians,” a reference to the lack of input by Palestinian leaders. The top supervisory body for postwar Gaza would be run by Mr. Trump and former British prime minister Tony Blair.

Father Neuhaus agrees that the peace plan is lopsided. “They should give Palestinians a say in their future,” he says. “So far, it’s ‘If you don’t do what we tell you to do, we let Netanyahu continue the war of destruction in Gaza,’” he says, referring to the Israeli Prime Minister.

A cautious calm settles over Gaza as the ceasefire takes hold

The Latin Patriarchate is paying close attention to the peace negotiations, all the more so since it is well connected to Israeli and Palestinian officials. In Gaza, it ran several well-respected Catholic schools whose students were mostly Muslim children, giving the patriarchate access to their parents, many of whom were part of the Gaza’s political, financial and cultural elite; among them were members of the Hamas political party. “Cardinal Pizzaballa is understandably proud that the Church is well embedded in society in all parts of Palestine and Israel, including in Gaza,” Father Neuhaus says.

Cardinal Pizzaballa would not comment on any specific political connections in Gaza or elsewhere.

He is the first Latin Patriarch to be elevated to cardinal, an indication of the importance of the Holy Land in Pope Francis’s view and his desire for the Vatican to pursue interfaith dialogue. In 1990, the young theology student-priest was sent by his superiors to Jerusalem, as assignment he was not expecting. “When I arrived in, it was very difficult,” he says. “I did not speak the language and there was culture shock for me. Then came the Gulf War, which mean Scud missiles from Iraq and a curfew.”

After using books and radio to teach himself Hebrew, he settled into Jerusalem and delved into its political and religious complexities. He studied biblical theology at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was appointed Custodian of the Holy Land in 2004. A dozen years later, he was ordained bishop and became the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem.

Open this photo in gallery:

I ask how his life as a minority Catholic in a largely Hebrew-speaking, Jewish society has changed his faith. He says that growing up in Italy, Catholicism was the norm, its gospel and traditions taken for granted. In Jerusalem, he was peppered with questions from Jews and Arabs about his faith.

“For example, the heart of my faith, the resurrection of Jesus, I was not able to explain,” he says. “It took me some time to understand that the resurrection cannot be explained. These questions help you reconsider what was taken for granted in you. And this helps you to understand better Jesus.”

On non-religious matters, the cardinal became well regarded for his diplomatic savvy. In 2014, Pope Francis made him the point man on the “prayer for peace” in the Vatican Gardens with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israel’s then-president Shimon Peres, along with the pope and Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.

Since then, Arabs and Jews have grown further apart, making Cardinal Pizzaballa’s job more frustrating – and essential. Does he think Arabs and Jews can ever live peacefully together, as they did before Israel was created in 1948? His answer is not optimistic.

“You need two more generations to achieve this, before they can live together,” he says. “The wounds are too deep. You need a process of healing. You need to change the political situation to create a serene life for all.”