Washington, July 17, 2025 (RTSG) – A round of tank fire that tore into Gaza City’s Holy Family Catholic Church on Thursday has fractured Christian opinion and triggered one of the sharpest Vatican rebukes of Israel since Oct. 7, 2023. Three parishioners were killed and many more wounded; the parish priest, Fr. Gabriel Romanelli, was among the injured.
Israeli officials called the strike an accident, yet Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, openly questioned that claim. Sources close to the patriarchate told The Pillar that some officials suspect retaliation for church leaders’ recent condemnation of settler violence in a West Bank Christian town.
Vatican voice grows harsher
“The time has come to stop this slaughter,” the pontiff insisted, urging an immediate ceasefire. He would later escalate his condemnation of Israel further. Pope Leo XIV rejected Israel’s “stray‑round” explanation outright, calling the shelling an “attack by the Israeli army.” The strike, he said, “adds to the continuous military attacks against the civilian population and places of worship in Gaza,” and the broader Israeli campaign amounts to “barbarism.”
The pope’s language has grown steadily sharper. Speaking to ROACO delegates on 28 June, he drew a biblical parallel, appearing to suggest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resembled King Herod (the biblical Jewish King of Judaea known for the Massacre of the Innocents)—“who, for fear of being deposed, murdered children who even today continue to be torn apart by bombs.” He warned that the world risked becoming like Pontius Pilate, “washing its hands” until a “point of no return” is reached.
More recently the pope has begun to face Israeli criticism for a perceived hostile tone toward the country. With a member of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s Inter-Religious Council, Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weisz, lamenting the tone as “painful” and accusing the pope of having an “absence of empathy for Israeli victims” in a letter he wrote last Wednesday.
Conservative support erodes
The incident is eroding once-solid pro-Israel sentiment on the U.S. right. Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, a conservative Christian, told listeners, “Israel, you’re losing me.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene proposed stripping $500 million from Israel’s missile-defense funds, accusing the IDF of intentionally attacking the Catholic church and carrying out an aggressive campaign to wipe out the entire population of Gaza.
Inside the Christian-Zionist milieu, cracks widened. Luke Moon of Philos Catholic (a Catholic initiative under the Philos Project, a pro-Israel Christian organization) dismissed Cardinal Pizzaballa’s remarks as unfair and attacked the leaders of the Catholic Church broadly, prompting Catholic writer Sohrab Ahmari to quit the Philos advisory board and ex-staffer Khalil Sayegh to label the project “nothing more than a hasbara organization.” Babylon Bee managing editor Joel Berry pushed the envelope even further, claiming on social media that every Catholic in Gaza “supports Hamas” and therefore falls outside the “true Christian faith.” By implying they are, from his view, legitimate military targets—and even affirming that the Catholic Church collaborated with the Nazis—Berry’s remarks struck (his message has around 8 million views as of today) as an outright justification of the church shelling.
Amidst already shifting public opinion
A national poll by SSRS earlier this month found just 23 percent of Americans now say Israel is “fully justified” in Gaza, down 27 points from a 2023 poll taken shortly after October 7. Support fell across the spectrum: Republicans from 68 to 52 percent, Democrats from 38 to 7, and independents from 45 to 14.
Written by Louis, Edited by Seraph
