{"id":1055980,"date":"2026-06-28T18:46:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T18:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1055980\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T18:46:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T18:46:22","slug":"catholic-cardinal-risks-israels-wrath-in-moral-appeal-for-eu-sanctions-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1055980\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic cardinal risks Israel\u2019s wrath in moral appeal for EU sanctions \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is not every day that God calls for EU sanctions on Israel, but Roman Catholic cardinal V\u00edctor Manuel Fern\u00e1ndez appeared to do so at the opening of an Extraordinary Consistory in the Vatican<\/a> on Friday (26 June) with Pope Leo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe European Union, in fact, imposes economic sanctions on one country, and sends financial aid and weapons to another, fails \u2026 in the face of other, even more serious invasions, with even more brutal consequences for entire populations\u201d, Fern\u00e1ndez said.<\/p>\n

In case it was not clear if he meant EU sanctions on Russia<\/a> and arms sales to Israel<\/a>, the cardinal also said Israel\u2019s \u201cdestruction of entire cities cannot be considered a proportionate defensive action. The enormous disproportion of the military interventions in Gaza and southern Lebanon \u2026 is evident\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince these are territories that are densely populated, the percentage of civilian deaths relative to the total population, the enormous number of children killed \u2026 and the number of homes bombed, allow us to speak of total destruction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He framed EU inaction on Israel as symptomatic of a global order in which there is \u201cno longer a real and stable framework of truth and values.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And Fern\u00e1ndez warned that Israel and Russia were framing their aggression in the \u201ctheological criteria\u201d of \u2018just wars\u2019 in Judaism and Orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

But if adding a senior Catholic view to the heady mix of geopolitics and religion risked aggravation, the cardinal\u2019s widely-covered speech was another nudge for Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni to join France, Sweden, and some 10 more EU states in forming a majority to impose sanctions on Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meloni is a rightwing populist, who already showed sensitivity to Catholic voters when she defended Leo in a row with US president Donald Trump in April, before getting involved in her own Trump brawl<\/a> in June.<\/p>\n

The Vatican has dozens of churches, missions, and holy sites in harm\u2019s way in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, in what were also political tripwires for Meloni, if Israel bombed them, or Jewish settlers attacked them, again.<\/p>\n

And so I do hope Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa\u2019ar, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, and security minister Itmar Ben-Gvir also read the cardinal\u2019s words on Gaza, because they are all loose cannons, likely to shoot Israeli PR in the foot, again.<\/p>\n

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are storied extremists, while Sa\u2019ar rejoined prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party a year ago, after having betrayed him, and is now trying to prove his Likudnik credentials via populist stunts to get a good place on party lists in Likud primaries in July.<\/p>\n

He declared EU foreign relations chief Kaja Kallas persona non grata on X on 18 June, while accusing her of antisemitic \u201cblood libel\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And he picked a fight with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan on Sunday by championing an Israeli cabinet decision to recognise the Armenian genocide as \u201cgenocide\u201d<\/a> in 1915 to 1917.<\/p>\n

He was either tone deaf to the irony of what a UN inquiry called Israel\u2019s ongoing \u201cgenocide\u201d in Gaza<\/a> on 23 June, or he wilfully denigrated it by his silence.<\/p>\n

For their part, EU Commission lawyers are still pondering if Israel trade restrictions can be adopted by a qualified majority vote<\/a>, or by consensus only (killing them at birth, due to stated Czech and German vetoes).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

EU’s<\/strong> Christian VIPs<\/strong><\/p>\n

But personalities often bend laws in Brussels, and so I hope that German Christian-democrat VIPs in the commission HQ, such as president Ursula von der Leyen, or her antisemitism watchdog Katharine von Schnurbein, who advocates against EU sanctions on Israel<\/a>, might have felt the same religious, moral, and political goose pimples as Meloni, if they heard cardinal Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s message.<\/p>\n

For her part, Dubravka \u0160uica, a Croatian conservative EU commissioner, was as deaf as Sa’ar when she met him in Tel Aviv on 22 June, posted gushing pics on X<\/a>, and did not mention his Kallas \u201cblood\u201d slur.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael declares Kaja Kallas persona non grata over [her] alleged antisemitic attitude and the very next day her colleague \u2026 exchanges smiles and no reproach whatsoever with minister Gideon Sa’ar,\u201d said former EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell<\/a> on Thursday, who Israel has also banned from entry.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a fine display of ‘solidarity and coordination’ in the EU,” said the Spanish socialist.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Fern\u00e1ndez said at the Extraordinary Consistory on Friday that: \u201cViolence, cynicism, and spiteful verbal attacks by political leaders in some countries have reached levels that were unimaginable not long ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I saw this, I first thought of US president Donald Trump’s sociopathic rants.<\/p>\n

But silence or negligence can also be violent, cynical, and spiteful, as has been the case with the EU failure to act against Israel, despite what the cardinal called its \u201cdestruction of entire cities \u2026 enormous number of children.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is not every day that God calls for EU sanctions on Israel, but Roman Catholic cardinal V\u00edctor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1055981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,1699,221969,245341,245339,221967,245340,221968],"class_list":["post-1055980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-identifier4328","tag-identifier4599","tag-nameeuobserver-voice","tag-nameisrael","tag-termcodeeuobserver-voice","tag-termcodeisrael"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116829224463319824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1055980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1055981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1055980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1055980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1055980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}