Vatican Seeks to Defuse Tensions with Israel

Holy See officials this week rushed to remedy tensions with Israel, which criticized the Vatican’s pronouncements on the outbreak of violence in the Holy Land as too impartial and lacking a clear condemnation of Hamas. On Friday, the Christian Patriarchs and church leaders in Jerusalem, including the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, issued a joint statement that did not openly condemn the actions of Hamas and demanded that Israel avoid the killing of innocents. The Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, Raphael Schutz, harshly criticized the statement on X (formerly Twitter).