By Peter.
In a landmark face-to-face huddle, Pope Leo XIV welcomed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to the Vatican on Thursday—their first in-person pow-wow since the U.S.-born pontiff took the helm of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics back in May—zeroing in on the dire push for humanitarian lifelines in Gaza amid a shaky ceasefire.
Nearly a month after the U.S.-brokered truce halted the two-year bloodbath sparked by Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023, assault on Israel, the duo’s hour-long sit-down underscored the “urgent need” to rush aid to Gaza’s battered civilians and chase a two-state fix to snuff out the flames for good, per a Vatican readout. Abbas, the veteran Fatah boss with a tenuous grip on West Bank pockets (while Hamas has run Gaza since 2007), had teed up this Rome run with a poignant Wednesday stop at the tomb of Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, who bowed out in April after ramping up fiery slams on Israel’s Gaza siege.
The timing? Spot-on for the 10th anniversary of the Holy See’s 2015 nod to Palestinian statehood, a diplomatic olive branch that set the stage for this renewal. Their July phone jam had already flagged respect for global aid laws, civilian shields, and holy site safeguards—no indiscriminate blasts allowed—but Thursday cranked the volume on real-time relief and de-escalation.
Leo XIV, channeling a cooler-headed vibe than Francis’s late-game heat, has voiced rock-solid backing for Gaza’s plight and ripped forced Palestinian uprootings, but drew a line at slapping the “genocide” tag on the chaos. Abbas, laying blooms at Francis’s Santa Maria Maggiore resting spot the day prior, gushed to the press: “His Palestine love? Unforgettable.” Echoes of 2014’s iconic Vatican peace prayer—where Abbas and then-Israeli Prez Shimon Peres flanked Francis in olive-tree-planting symbolism—lingered like a hopeful ghost.
Wrapping his Italy jaunt, Abbas gears up for Friday talks with PM Giorgia Meloni, as Palestinian dispatches brief Leo on Gaza’s hellscape: aid blockades, West Bank flare-ups (including East Jerusalem and Bethlehem’s squeeze), settler terror sprees, land grabs, and assaults on sacred spots. Abbas hammered home the to-do: Lock the ceasefire, flood in supplies, free captives and detainees, force Israeli pullback, rebuild without exile or seizures, hand Gaza reins to a sovereign Palestine, and quit gutting state structures.
This Vatican-Palestine pivot? A quiet power play in fragile times, blending Leo’s fresh American lens with timeless calls for equity—proving the pontiff’s throne isn’t just about prayers, but pipelines to peace.
