GAZA (Vatican Media/OSV News): Father Gabriel Romanelli, parish priest of the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, said that the area’s small Christian community is exhausted by war and a severe lack of food. He spoke to Vatican Radio after Israeli air strikes killed 13 people—six of them children—at a water collection point on July 13.
Father Romanelli noted that basic goods had reached unimaginable prices and are almost impossible to find due to blockade of humanitarian aid. He said flour reached US$11 per half kilogramme, tomatoes are US$13 per half kilogramme and a single onion costs between US$14 and US$17.
Sugar is US$50 per half kilogramme, he said,”But coffee, bitter or not, is out of reach entirely: it goes for no less than €250 [US$290] per kilo.”
Father Romanelli said that the aid they had stored during the truce “allowed us to sustain ourselves for the past few months, and even to help several Muslim families living in the neighbourhood of the parish. But after Israel halted humanitarian aid on March 3, nothing else has arrived. Since then, we’ve had to keep what remains for ourselves and even then, we are rationing it carefully.”
“All around us, there is only death and destruction. Day and night, we live with the sound of bombs falling, sometimes just a few hundred metres from the church. It is surreal, but after 21 months, these terrible explosions have become part of our daily routine,” he said.
Father Romanelli has fond memories of the phone calls Pope Francis gave him almost every night, when he was still in good health.
“The nightly phone calls from Pope Francis were a tremendous source of strength,” he said.
“To know that we are just a small part of something much greater—the universal Church—and to know that over a billion Christians around the world are praying for this small, suffering community, gives us extraordinary resilience. Food, medicine, and fuel are as essential to us as prayer itself. Without prayer, ours and yours, we would not have made it this far. We are counting on you,” he said.
