Pope Leo XIV calls for end of Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and “sufficient humanitarian aid” to be let in

Pope Leo XIV called Wednesday for sufficient humanitarian aid to be allowed into war-ravaged Gaza, where humanitarian agencies say a total blockade has sparked critical food and medicine shortages. Israel has, under massive pressure from the U.S. and other allies, started to allow more aid into Gaza this week, but it has not eased its military operations, and aid agencies say the amount of humanitarian goods entering the strip is nowhere near enough to meet the urgent needs of a battered civilian population.

The United Nations announced Monday that it had been cleared to send in aid for the first time since Israel imposed a total blockade on March 2, sparking severe shortages of food and medicine.

“The situation in the Gaza Strip is worrying and painful,” the pope said during his first weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square. “I renew my heartfelt appeal to allow the entry of sufficient humanitarian aid and to put an end to the hostilities, the heartbreaking price of which is paid by children, the elderly, the sick.”

Leo, who was elected on May 8 to be the Catholic Church’s first U.S. pope, has made peace an early theme of his papacy, calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

The Israeli army has stepped up its offensive in Gaza in recent days, with the enclave’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health saying some 600 people have been killed over the last week alone. Israel says both the restrictions on aid and the stepped-up military campaign are aimed at pressuring Hamas — long designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. and Israel — to release the remaining 58 hostages held in Gaza and to accept a ceasefire on Israeli terms.

Israel has vowed to carry on with its war until the hostages, about 20 of whom are believed to be alive, are free, Hamas is defeated and disarmed and its leaders are sent into exile. The war was sparked by the Hamas-led, Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken as hostages into Gaza.

The health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatant and civilian casualties, says more than 53,500 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory war, many of them women and children.

Charity calls Israeli easing of Gaza blockade “a smokescreen”

The amount of aid Israel has started to allow into war-ravaged Gaza is not nearly enough and is “a smokescreen to pretend the siege is over,” the MSF aid group said Wednesday.

“The Israeli authorities’ decision to allow a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid into Gaza after months of an air-tight siege signals their intention to avoid the accusation of starving people in Gaza, while in fact keeping them barely surviving,” said Pascale Coissard, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) emergency coordinator in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. “The current authorization for 100 [trucks] per day, when the situation is so dire, is woefully inadequate.”

“Meanwhile, evacuation orders are continuing to uproot the population, while Israeli forces are still subjecting health facilities to intensive attacks,” Coissard said.

Israel said 93 trucks had entered Gaza from Israel on Tuesday, but the United Nations said the aid had been held up.

Asked Tuesday about Israel’s latest moves, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Washington that the Trump administration had been “pleased to see that aid is starting to flow in again.’

“I understand your point that it’s not in sufficient amounts,” he told a journalist. “But we were pleased to see that decision was made. I understand another 100 trucks are behind that and maybe more in the next few days.”

Rubio said the U.S. was working with the U.N.’s World Food Program “to walk through some of the ideas and plans they had for distribution” of aid inside Gaza, but he stressed that in the administration’s view, “ultimately the answer here is for this [war] to end, hopefully with the elimination of Hamas, because the people of Gaza deserve a more prosperous, peaceful future, which they will never have as long as Hamas exists.”